Understanding how the brain controls behavior is at the heart of neuroscience. Both the brain and behavior can be overwhelmingly complex and plastic, but neurogenetic methods are powerful tools for unraveling the principles of how the brain controls behavior. This lecture will provide an overview of current and important topics in behavioral neuroscience (e.g., sleep, appetite and feeding control, social behavior, mating, mirror neurons, molecular mechanisms of auditory behavior, neurogenetic techniques), with an emphasis on the genetic model system Drosophila melanogaster, but the content will also be illustrated with examples from other animal groups of insects and mammals.