Your paper may be about any topic that interests you within the area of biopsychology. However, the focus of your paper must be on brain function. For example, if you elect to write an essay on schizophrenia, the focus should be on what we know about the biological basis of schizophrenia and NOT on the symptoms of the disorder. Information cited in your paper must be appropriately referenced and based upon textbook and internet material such as journal articles or Government web sites such as NIH, NIDA, etc. WIKIPEDIA IS NOT AN APPROPRIATE REFERENCE
Your paper must include at least 4 Peer Reviewed Journal Articles. These are papers that present original research findings. They typically have the following sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. They will cover theory and background, present a detailed methodology, present data and statistics, and then make some conclusions about the findings. THESE are the papers that will count toward the 4-paper minimum for Peer Reviewed Journal Articles. You can find an example of a peerreviewed research article here: http://www.pnas.org/content/97/11/6150.full.pdf html. Please note the sections mentioned above. These are the markings of a good empirical paper. All sources should be investigations of brain/biological phenomena. All cited work should be referenced on the References page, and each reference should be cited in the body of the paper.  1) title page, (2) abstract, (3) an introductory paragraph that includes your thesis statement, (4) body of the essay that includes a review of literature that explains, supports, interprets, and analyses your thesis, (5) concluding paragraph that summarizes your thesis, interpretations, and original conclusion, and (6) reference page. All references must be cited in the body of the paper. All cited works must be referenced. Advice on the Body of the Essay: Each paragraph of the body should be about a BRAIN (or expressly BIOLOGICAL: genes, hormones, etc.) mechanism and how it relates to the topic. Each paragraph should start with a topic statement about the involvement of this mechanism in the phenomenon. The paragraph should describe the methods and findings of the source(s), and explain how the findings provide support for the thesis statement and the topic sentence of the paragraph. An adequate analysis of each source will include a discussion of the methods (procedures and measures), the significant findings, the relationship of the findings to the thesis, and potential limits of the findings.