In reality, psychology has advanced to a respectable science with numerous areas of study, all with distinct data bases and a varying corpus of knowledge directly associated with each area. These scientific domains include forensic, clinical, counseling, health, community, social, experimental, cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience, biological, family, human memory, various theoretical areas, abnormal or psychopathology, neuropsychology, child, developmental, substance abuse, adolescent, psychometrics, human sexuality, cognitive, group, psychotherapy rehabilitation, school and various other areas. Many of these are not the exclusive province of psychology.

The point is that psychology is both a science and a profession. Virtually every training model for psychologists in the country focuses on the scientist-practitioner model. In that way licensed psychologists with their doctoral level degree and generally three thousand hours of supervised experience keep track of scientific advances in their field and apply those to practical situations. Psychologists undergo intensive training including at least a year in statistics in order to properly evaluate research papers if they are not conducting studies and to use the proper statistical and research methods to construct appropriate experimental designs in order to advance our understanding of human behavior.

Dr. Ebert has studied and worked in many areas of psychology including but not limited to forensic, counseling, neuroscience, family, child, adolescent, sleep, human memory, psychotherapy and even experimental when he was at both Southern Illinois U. working in a rat laboratory and at the University of Illinois Springfield working in a research department at the SIU Medical School. There is no question the white hot area of research today is in neuroscience with forensics as a close and related second. At this time of our lives we have tools to gain immeasurably in our understanding of the brain, the most complex organism in the universe.

A central component of the brain are cells called neurons. These neurons are well studied although there are more questions than answers from this research. The neuron has a central cell body, a long stem and various tentacles to make contact with other neurons. The place where neurons meet is called the synapse. Every synapse in the cerebral cortex has a tiny space between as denoted in the figure below. We are born with about a 100 billion neurons in our brains. Contrary to popular belief the brain continues to grow and make additional synaptic pathways for a very long time and may even continue to grow in later life.

There are chemicals that move information from one neuron to the other in the small synaptic space between them. In fact, the theory of why drugs like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa and Lexapro work is they allow more of the necessary chemicals to move back and forth between the neurons. These chemicals are called neurotransmitters and there are many in the brain responsible for diverse functions.

One area of the brain subject to study by many scientists is the hippocampus. It is a small area fairly deep in the brain that is associated with memory. Many memories appear to be stored in this area, especially long term memories. Many forensic psychologists, but not all, are experts on human memory and the underlying neuroscience of it. Memory is critical in many types of cases. It is the fundamental neural mechanism located above the brain stem and next to the hypothalamus responsible for storage of our long term memories. It connects with areas in the frontal and occipital lobe to assist us in reporting our human experiences to others. The illustration below shows the location in the brain of this important structure. Although we tend to feel confident about our memories research demonstrates it is very fallible and subject to error and phenomena that make memories quite unreliable.

Dr. Ebert often participates in case dealing with human memory. Some of these cases are criminal law such as when a substance like alcohol impairs a person’s ability to recall a critical period of hours during a date. Understanding such phenomena as alcohol blackouts and explaining what it is provides critical evidence for a jury to hear and understand.

When selecting a psychologist for work that is legal in nature it is critical to have a person who is a true forensic psychologist. Plus, there are subspecialties in forensic psychologists. Some focus on civil litigation, some on child custody matters, there are forensic neuropsychologists, experts in sexual abuse and child abuse, many who do mostly criminal work doing insanity, competency and sentencing cases, some even work on various probate matters and some psychologists focus on both the standard of care by another psychologist and ethics. Dr. Ebert’s background is quite broad allowing him to work in many areas. He taught Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology and various other topics such as Ethics and Law over the past twenty five years. Below is a list of important websites dealing with psychology, forensic psychology and neuroscience.