<p>OP, have you participated in neuroscience research yet? Most neuroscience research involves either cell biology (culturing mammalian cells) or animal models, and requires infrastructure, certifications, resources, etc. which would be extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain/support in a HS facility. Most neuroscience research uses biological or at the very least biochemical methodology rather than chemical; I am having a hard time envisioning a neuroscience research project that could be carried out using the resources in a typical undergraduate freshman chemistry teaching lab, which I think would correspond to the best-equipped high school chemistry classroom. Rather than actually doing research, I suppose you could follow some chemical recipes to make compounds which are known to have some neurological effect; however a) if these are regulated chemicals you’d need to have approval that may be difficult to obtain in a high school, b) following recipes isn’t research and c) if you wanted to follow by testing the biological activity of the compounds you make, you would probably not be able to obtain equipment, supplies, and approval to do so. </p>
<p>The advice given by several other posters to do research in the summer in a lab at a university is excellent, especially if you can go back to the same lab each summer so each year you don’t have to start from scratch learning a new system, and can hit the ground running. For context, I have a friend who is a departmental chair of a biology department in a small private 4-year college; his graduate work was in genetics, and in order to keep his hands in research he spends his summers in a lab in a local research university, because his own department in a LAC isn’t adequately equipped for real experiments.</p>
<p>I suggest that, if you haven’t already, you find a way to volunteer in a neurosciences lab - either in the summer if you are still in HS or during the school year if you are in college. There is nothing like first-hand experience to help you decide on a path to take.</p>