Research master Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience: Cognitive Neuroscience

Programme Outline

This teaching programme covers relevant topics of Cognitive Neuroscience and reflects the research expertise of the ‘Cognitive Neuroscience’ group at the Maastricht Brain Imaging Center (M-BIC). By addressing key issues in perceptual and cognitive brain research, you will build a detailed understanding of how the ‘working’ brain perceives, feels, moves learns, and creates a conscious mind. Specific course topics include auditory and visual perception, attention, language, sensorimotor functions, learning, and memory as well as brain connectivity and connectomics and neuroimaging in disorders of consciousness.

Moreover, you learn to translate this knowledge in empirical research by extensive hands-on training in all aspects of the experimental cycle, including experimental design, recording and manipulating brain activation, and advanced data analysis. Methods that you will learn to apply include (f)MRI, fNIRS, DWI, TMS, tDCS, EEG/MEG as well as data analysis in Matlab, EEGLAB, Brainvoyager, and Turbo-BrainVoyager (neurofeedback).

Internships

Thanks to the local research infrastructure as well as an exceptionally rich international network, you have ample opportunities for internships in cognitive neuroscience and related fields in our center and at top universities throughout the world (including Cambridge, Harvard, NIH, Stanford, University College London). Internship research topics range from fundamental brain research (e.g. neural basis of perceptual learning, layer-specific attention effects in visual cortex at 7T fMRI) and applications of advanced neuroimaging methods (e.g. brain-computer interfaces, multi-modal imaging) to clinical research (e.g. tDCS-based alleviation of phantom pain, neurofeedback training in Parkinson patients). We will help you find a topic and location that best fit your own interests and career goals.

Teaching staff and research environment

The Cognitive Neuroscience teaching staff consists of an international and multidisciplinary team of researchers including psychologists, biologists, physicians, engineers, physicists, and computer scientists affiliated to the M-BIC and Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience.

The M-BIC offers a unique research infrastructure with (ultra) high field imaging facilities (3T, 7T) and one of only five 9.4T systems worldwide, as well as fully equipped EEG, fNIRS, and TMS/tDCS laboratories. Research is organized around perceptual, cognitive, and methodological themes. Examples of applied/clinical research projects include fMRI-based neurofeedback therapy (e.g. depression, spider phobia), brain-based communication in locked-in patients, TMS/tDCS-guided brain recovery after a stroke or brain injury, brain-based assessment of dyslexia intervention, tinnitus remediation, and hearing-aid applications.