Courses taught by Professor Lindgren

Academic Year 2025-2026

Fall 2025: 

BIO 150: Introduction to Biological Inquiry: The Language of Neurons (Lecture and Lab)

In this course students will actively learn how biologists study the nervous system. Specifically, students will work as neuroscientists for a semester and will attempt to learn something novel about how nerve cells communicate with one another at chemical synapses. Students will present their findings at the end of the semester via both oral and written presentations. Papers resulting from a substantial independent project will be published in the class journal, Pioneering Neuroscience: The Grinnell Journal of Neurophysiology. 

TUT100: First Year Tutorial” … divided we fall. (Lecture) 

America is divided, as are most modern democracies.  Those on the right and the left are deeply entrenched in their viewpoints, where compromise is perceived as weakness and understanding as betrayal. Those on opposite sides of the right/left divide see each other as not only wrong, but evil.  How did it come to this? Are we doomed to “fall?” We will explore these questions from the vantage point of moral psychology and evolutionary theory.  Scholars in both disciplines have recently offered key insights into human nature that help explain why division is so natural to us.  More importantly, these insights suggest ways we may rise above these instincts and work toward unity.

 

Spring 2026:

NRS 250: Neuroscience: Foundations, Future, and Fallacies (Lecture)

This course introduces the historical and theoretical foundations of neuroscience. Topics will range broadly from questions at the molecular and cellular level to those of organismal behavior; and consideration will be given to how traditional disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and psychology have helped inform the field. The course will trace the development of neuroscience, considering both its successes and failures, as a means for appreciating its future directions.

BIO 363: Neurobiology (Lecture and Lab)

This course examines the structure, function, and development of the nervous system. Cellular and molecular mechanisms are emphasized and examples are drawn from throughout the animal kingdom.

 

Previous courses taught:

BIO 150: Introduction to Biological Inquiry – The Language of Neurons

BIO 251: Molecules, Cells and Organisms.

BIO 364: Animal Physiology

BIO 390: Readings in Biology – Optogenetics

NRS 195: Brain Science and the Human Animal (Liberal Arts in Prison Program)

NRS 495: Neuroscience Seminar

TUT 100: First-Year Tutorial – Criminal Brains