This is a competing renewal of a five-year Institutional NRSA application for the support of predoctoral students in the interdepartmental Graduate Program in Neuroscience at Emory University. A fundamental strength of this program is the broad interdisciplinary training provided in a wide spectrum of neurobiological issues spanning several basic and clinical neuroscience-related disciplines. Because of the significant growth in highly qualified applicants to this program during the past funding period and the high success rate of current trainees in building up an outstanding record of peer-reviewed publications and successfully competing for external funds at the national level (among the top 4 neuroscience programs for NRSAs at the national level), we seek support for 10 students per year in this renewal (ie 3 more than the current funding state). A total of 81 PhD students (+ 17 new recruits for fall 2020) are enrolled in this program, which has consistently attracted a large and very high quality applicant pool from all over US and a significant number of international applicants with outstanding academic credentials. The program has been extremely successful in enrolling outstanding underrepresented minority (URM) students during the past 5 years, and in attracting a larger pool of highly qualified URM to apply. Over 25% of the current pool of students in the program and trainees supported by this training grant are from URM ethnic groups, a 65% increase from the previous renewal application. Over 90% of trainees who have been supported by this training grant for the past ten years have successfully developed research-related careers. The attrition rate of the program has been below 10% for the past ten years. An Executive Committee representing the 130 (94 on this grant) faculty from 22 departments and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center administers the program. This committee is headed by the Director, who oversees all aspects of program operation, two Directors of Graduate Studies, who monitor student progress, and the Director of Admissions, who is in charge of recruitment of new students in the program. Students in the program receive a broad curriculum of molecular, cellular and systems neuroscience courses in their first two years. A required hypothesis design and grant writing course helps students prepare their thesis proposal (with oral defense) in the form of an NRSA predoctoral fellowship application. Training in quantitative literacy, scientific rigor and reproducibility has been integrated in these core courses. Trainees are also required to participate in 3 laboratory rotations before they pick their advisor (usually at the beginning of year 2). A wide variety of elective courses ranging from Basic Mechanisms of Neurological Diseases, Brain imaging, Computational Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology are available to advanced trainees. Finally, students actively participate in various seminar series and receive significa...