Programme outline

The master's programme aims to train students to become experts in their specific subfield of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences but with a clear understanding and appreciation of the contribution made by the other subfields. All students complete a core curriculum next to their chosen track within the Research Master's programme in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The core curriculum of this programme integrates various perspectives from within the discipline and includes a weekly journal club and an annual summer school, both of which focus on cutting-edge topics in an intensively interdisciplinary setting.

The goal is to provide a programme that is equal in disciplinary quality to monodisciplinary programmes but in addition trains you to be aware of and understand the separate contributions and research methods of the large number of disciplines that contribute to the field of cognition and thus not suffer the inadequacies of monodisciplines. This enables you to reflect on, interpret and answer complex questions arising in science nowadays and that arise in our modern society. Interdisciplinary thinking can not be learned from a book, but is a skill which develops from the learning process of combining insights of more than one discipline that can lead to new insights.

Some special features of this programme are:

• International CSCA Summer School
  The International Summer School is organised annually around a visiting ‘Frijda Professor' of international renown. The topic of the CSCA Summer School 2011 is 'Inhibition' and the Frijda Professor for the 2011 Summer School is Adele Diamond (Department of Psychiatry, University of British Colombia, Canada).
• CSCA Lecture Series
  This lecture series is organised by the CSCA and is part of the Research Master's programme in Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Lecturers are outstanding scholars active in a variety of disciplines, including neurobiology, psychology, linguistics, computer science and philosophy.
• International Study Trip
  Each year, the programme organises an international study trip during which students and lecturers visit a foreign university and/or research institute. The trip allows students to meet with leading international researchers and discuss these researchers' state-of-the-art experiments with them. 

Degree requirements

A Master of Science in Brain and Cognitive Sciences is awarded upon successful completion of all the courses in the curriculum, a literature thesis and two written reports based on independent research projects. This translates into a total of 120 ECTS credits.

Tracks

Depending on their background, students can choose between three tracks offered within the Research Master's programme in Brain and Cognitive Sciences:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science

These tracks allow students to specialise in a given area while at the same keeping up with developments in the overarching field of brain and cognitive sciences, and while enjoying common goals and interests with students from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Research project

All students of the Master's programme in Brain and Cognitive Sciences have to conduct two research projects. These are a mandatory part of the Master's programme. The student will conduct the research project independently, but will be supervised by a professor, post-doc or PhD.

The objective of the research projects is to provide students with an opportunity to acquire practical experience by scientific research methods, to learn the different phases of research, to conduct a research project independently (they will be able to set it up, carry it out and round it off with a scientific report) and to learn to work in a research lab. Students get an opportunity to participate in all stages of scientific research, including the development of a research question, designing the experiment and the selection of the research methods to address the question, data collection and analysis, the interpretation of the data, and discussion.

Below you find a list of some of the research labs and universities where our past students have conducted their research project:

• University of Amsterdam  
  • Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
  • Psychology Department
  • Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences
  • Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication
  • Center for Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making
• Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, The Netherlands
• Amsterdam Medical Center, The Netherlands
• F. C. Donders Instituut Nijmegen, The Netherlands
• Center for Mind and Brain, Davis, California, USA
• Center for Molecular and Behavorial Neuroscience, Rutgers University, New York, USA
• Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience Lab, Princeton University, USA
• Berkeley University, Helen WIlls Institute, USA
• Birbeck College, University of London, UK
• MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK
• Labaratoire Cognition et Developpement, Paris, France
• Max Planck Institute, Leipzig/Berlin, Germany
• Chartie, Departement of Psychiatry, Berlin, Germany

Detailed course information

For detailed information regarding the curriculum and courses, please see the UvA Course Catalogue via the link below.