Grinnell-in-London Faculty

Jan Thornton is Professor of Neuroscience and Biology at Oberlin College, where she has taught since 1990. She did her undergraduate work at Portland State University in Oregon, Masters and PhD work in physiological psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and then did postdoctoral research at Rockefeller University and Rutgers-Newark in the field of neuroendocrinology. She then did cellular and molecular biology research at the Oregon Health Sciences University and was an Affiliate Research Scientist at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center. She has an active research program that includes undergraduates as researchers and has more than 30 original articles in scientific journals. She is on the national executive committee for the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, was selected as part of Project Kaleidoscope's Faculty for the 21st Century, and was honored with Oberlin College's Distinguished Teaching Award. Her research focuses on neuroendocrinology; how hormones exert their e ffects on the brain. To this end she uses a variety of techniques from behavioral analysis to molecular biological techniques. Currently her lab is examining the effects of reproductive hormones on spatial memory, Alzheimer's Disease, and Schizophrenia. At Oberlin, she teaches courses on hormones and the brain, cell and molecular biology, and behavioral neuroscience, as well as a popular first-year seminar on "Science and the Mind."