This focus session aimed to address issues in integrating basic and clinical aspects of neurobiology, behavioral sciences and psychiatry in the undergraduate medical curriculum. Such integration was viewed as occurring across successive years of the medical curriculum as well as across courses. In some instances, integration also occurred within a specific course. The discussion within the focus session covered a diverse set of topics reflecting the breadth of backgrounds and teaching involvement of the focus session attendees which included basic science and clinical educators and included teachers of neuroscience, neurophysiology, neuropsychopharmacology, behavioral sciences, patient interviewing, psychopathology, epidemiology and biostatistics. Specific issues raised in the session included the wide variety of models for structuring the teaching of neurobiology, neuropsychopharmacology, behavioral sciences and psychiatry within the medical curriculum of each institution, the differences between integration within a problem-based-learning curriculum and other curricular approaches, the difficulties of delivering an integrated message to students given the diversity of theoretical models of psychiatry (e.g. biological, developmental, psychodynamic, psychoanalytic), and the challenges of working with other instructors and course directors each of whom may have differing teaching goals, emphases and responsibilities. Given the necessity for building on existing knowledge across the curriculum, the sequence in which particular topics were taught was another factor that was identified as influencing integration. Over the course of the focus group session, it became clear that each course and each institution is relatively unique in the ways in which it approaches the teaching and integration of neurobiology, behavioral sciences and psychiatry. Those institutions in which integration works best seem to have developed collegial and collaborative relationships between teachers or have some individual faculty whose expertise and involvement spans the continuum of basic and clinical realms in teaching neurobiology, neuropsychopharmacology, behavioral sciences and psychiatry. **** **** ****
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