Cognitive Neuroscience and Human Neuroimaging MSc

University of Sheffield

Understand the relationships between cognitive function and the underlying neural substrate in healthy and unhealthy brains and develop your skills and knowledge in neuroimaging, neurophysiological data collection and analysis techniques, and practical neuroanatomy.

Course description

This 12-month course is designed to provide you with in-depth training in the core aspects of cognitive neuroscience and human neuroimaging, enabling you to generate and interpret neurobiological data in order to draw conclusions from healthy and unhealthy brains.

We’ll also train you in neuroanatomy, neuroimaging, neurophysiological data collection, and analysis techniques, allowing you to investigate and understand human behaviour.

Throughout your course, our neuroscientists will introduce you to key investigative techniques including functional and structural MRI, skin conductance response recording, neuropsychology, transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation. Once you’ve mastered the techniques you need, we’ll give you plenty of opportunities to apply these throughout your course to test hypotheses in areas including emotional influences on behaviour, executive functioning, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and motor neuron disease.

Over three months you'll work on your research project in Cognitive Neuroscience with one of our world-leading experts in the Department of Psychology. Your research topic could range from theoretical to basic neuroscience. You may have the opportunity to collect and analyse real-life cognitive brain science data, using state-of-the-art equipment, before presenting your findings at our summer student-led conference. This project gives you the opportunity to put your new techniques in experimental neuroscience into practice, while exploring ideas at the cutting-edge of cognitive neuroscience. It's common for MSc research projects to form the basis of publications in peer-reviewed journals.

If you have a passion for understanding the brain and behaviour, whether your background stems from biology, engineering, physics, mathematics, psychology or medicine, this interdisciplinary course has been designed to ensure that all students gain in-depth knowledge of the fundamentals of neuroscience, ready for an exciting career in research or industry.

The University is home to the Neuroscience Institute which brings together internationally-recognised expertise in medicine, science and engineering to improve the lives of patients and families affected by neurological, sensory and developmental disorders.

Please see our University website for the most up-to-date course information.