In what could be a major victory for one of President Neil L. Rudenstine's inter-faculty initiatives, a group of professors will propose next Tuesday that Harvard establish a new concentration in neuroscience.

"Many people call the brain the last uncharted area of biology," said Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences John E. Dowling, one of the professors involved in the proposal. "I'm hoping we can keep the momentum going and eventually have a concentration in neuroscience."

But first the proposal will have to clear a number of bureaucratic hurdles: it must be approved by the steering committee for the inter-faculty initiative in Mind, Brain and Behavior, the Educational Policy Committee and the Faculty Council before any serious organization can begin.

If all that happens this year, however, undergraduates could concentrate in neuroscience as early as September, 1996.

The Mind, Brain and Behavior initiative is one of five inter-faculty programs established two years ago as the University prepared for its $2 billion capital campaign.

The initiative has attracted professors from the College and many graduate schools, including some scholars in non-science disciplines, Dowling said.

Professor Lawrence E. Sullivan, the director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Divinity School, is interested in the neurological impact of drugs used in religious rituals.

Dowling said students interested in brains and behavior often pursue studies in biology or psychology, where they can subconcentrate in neuroscience.

But students who want to focus more intensely on neuroscience still do not have faculty support and structure, said Fred Soo '96. That is why three years ago several students formed the Undergraduate Society for Neuroscience, said Soo, co-chair of the group.

Laurie Santos '97, treasurer of the Society, said she has noticed increased interest in the field.

"At last year's meetings we hardly had anyone show up," Santos said. "This year we've had huge waves of people."

Santos and several other students in the group said they would concen- trate in neuroscience if it were offered.

Dowling explained that the proposal suggests a concentration requiring an introductory course in neuroscience, a sophomore course in neurology or psychobiology, third year seminars and fourth-year research.

Concentrators would specialize in neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience or sociocultural interaction