Read Issue 1
About The Nerve
The Nerve is a multidisciplinary undergraduate magazine of writing on topics
ranging from biology to philosophy to computer science to sociology. All editors
and staff are undergraduate students at Boston University.
The magazine content is divided into three sections – Research In Brief,
Articles, and Reviews.
The Research In Brief section consists of one-paragraph and one-page summaries
of the most important research papers in the neurosciences from the past year.
The section editor oversees an advisory board of leading researchers from every
area of neuroscience; board members contribute papers from their field, which
our editors then summarize.
The Articles section consists of 3-4-page articles on general topics in the
relevant fields.
These articles require no background knowledge in the neurosciences and are
aimed at the general college student. For example, one article in Issue One
explains the matter of cognitive enhancement, and thus serves as an
informational tool for undergraduates. In short, these articles are relevant to
the community and will serve to provoke thought.
The Reviews section consists of longer papers with a more academically-minded
tone. These papers are similar in style to review articles in professional
journals and thus serve to prepare undergraduates for careers in science. To
ensure the credibility and integrity of the content, every paper is sent to two
members of the magazine’s External Review Board which consists of researchers
from universities across the country. The reviewers comment on the paper and
make a recommendation to the editor (i.e. to publish, how to revise, or reject).
Many of the papers in the Review section are originally written as term papers
for upper level classes.