Switching research focus; how to do it?

[PsychStudent]

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I'm a 2nd year clinical psych PhD student, and I'm really bored/dissatisfied with what I'm doing for research. I've gotten pretty excited about behavioral genetics lately, and if I end up staying in psych after I get my PhD I really wanted to make a drastic research switch. Unfortunately I have a very limited bio background. What could I do to make myself more knowledgable/marketable in behav. genetics while still in grad school? No profs at my school study this, so I'm feeling pretty stuck. Should I just take some undergrad chem and bio classes so that I can understand what's going on at a very basic level? Would I even be competitive for post-docs in their field with no research experience in this area? Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[Psyclops]

Chem classes might not be the best route, do you have bio bases of behavior at your program, I imagine that you are required to. Anyway, do they cover things like transcription factors, phosphorilation, protein kinases, etc? I'd imagine that more productive than taking an undergrad chem class, this stuff is really more bio as I see it, it would behoov you to have a professor give you some directed readings. If you went onto PsychINFO you could start by looking up stuff with rats that has to do with LG/ABN which stands for "Licking grooming and arched back nursing". It has been shown that the ammount of this type of behavior exhibited by mother rats (termed: dams) leads to differences in anxiety levels of her baby rats (termed: pups). It has been linked to modulation of protein synthesis in a manner that is beyond the scop of this post. Good Lukc, tell me how your search goes.

 

[PsychStudent]

Nope, my school doesn't have a biological basis of behavior class; that's why I would need to take an undergrad class. Unfortunately one can't take bio without having taken chem previously though.

 

[Psyclops]

I might be wrong, but doesn't evey program have to teach at least one course in Bio-bases of behavior for accredidation? You say this is clin psych, PhD? This is dissapointing. I guess the undergrad route might be best then, but what about neuroscience classes etc.? How big is your University?

 

[LM02]

I might be wrong, but doesn't evey program have to teach at least one course in Bio-bases of behavior for accredidation? You say this is clin psych, PhD? This is dissapointing. I guess the undergrad route might be best then, but what about neuroscience classes etc.? How big is your University?

I'm also confused - there should be someone teaching biopsych in your department (for the same reasons psyclops already covered).

There are a number of T32 postdoctoral fellowships that provide training in BG - the big one is the University of Colorado Institute of Behavioral Genetics (the editor of Behavior Genetics is there). Others include Wash U and Virginia Commonwealth.

But, of course, to be competitive for these postdocs you'll have to demonstrate some basic knowledge and some interest/experience. Could you talk with your current mentor about collaborating with someone at a different university to get some training/research done?

 

[PublicHealth]

E-mail Dr. Stephen Faraone. He's one of the top behavioral geneticists in the world. I'm sure he'd have some ideas.

 

[PsychStudent]

Let me clarify. The genetics class I'm taking now qualifies for our biopsych requirement, but it's not really bio at all. We talk about genetics without really learning any of the mechanisms. There aren't any other grad classes I can take in this area, which is why I'm looking at undergrad classes.

My clinical psych program is considered one of the "top" in the country according to US News (if that's really indicative of anything), but I don't want to say any more than that because we only have 2-3 people per graduating class and I value my anonymity.