Магистратура
2025/2026
Научно-исследовательский семинар "Когнитивные науки"
Статус:
Курс обязательный (Когнитивные науки и технологии: от нейрона к познанию)
Кто читает:
Институт когнитивных нейронаук
Где читается:
Институт когнитивных нейронаук
Когда читается:
1-й курс, 1-4 модуль
Охват аудитории:
для своего кампуса
Язык:
английский
Кредиты:
6
Контактные часы:
80
Course Syllabus
Abstract
The present program establishes minimum demands of students’ knowledge and skills, and determines content of the course. The present syllabus is aimed at department teaching the course, their teaching assistants, and students of the Master of Science program 37.04.01 «Cognitive sciences and technologies: from neuron to cognition».
Learning Objectives
- Know information for career design
- This course aims to teach students fundamental steps of the scientific method with practical applications that the students can use with their own thesis topics. For example, writing an abstract about their thesis topic, developing their data analyses plan and preparing a presentation for the thesis project. This course will offer students the opportunity to study how research examines how the mind works. This endeavour requires knowledge drawn from multiple perspectives. The lecturer will employ perspectives from psychology and neuroscience to explore the nature of mental processes. Students will have the opportunity to discuss how their own thesis project can contribute to the literature.
- Discuss logic, probability, and statistics to understand their relation with students' research projects.
- Research methods and experimental design are fundamental aspects for properly prepared scientific projects focusing on practical aspects. The lecturer will present on hypotheses development, various methodologies and tools used to answer different questions in cognitive science and psychological meta-subjective task analyses.
- Understand issues of science in society
- Lectures will focus on brain areas and related functional properties. Students will engage in practical activities that target cortical and sub-cortical regions. Practical activities will include historical understanding and current findings related to specific brain areas.
- The lecturer will overview fundamental practices in data collection, highlight the importance of hypothesis appropriate statistical analyses and introduce tools for analyzing data.
- Knowledge translation is key for communicating research findings. Academic writing may vary from short abstracts to long monographs. The lecturer will present on various writing techniques and give tips for academic writing focusing on research reports for peer-reviewed scientific journals. Practical activities will include preparing text for knowledge translation such as writing conference abstract.
- The last weeks of this course will focus on skills and techniques for orally presenting scientific findings. The lecturer will overview the dos and don'ts of poster and paper oral presentations.
- The aim is to help students choose a supervisor, a laboratory, better variant for research project and methods
- At the second year students will develop interdisciplinary thinking by studying behavioural economics (1 module), social cognition, executive functions, consciousness (2 module). Behavioral Economics (broadly defined) combines knowledge from several disciplines, such as Economics, Psychology, Sociology and Neuroscience. Students will learn how theories of human behavior are formalized, described and experimentally tested in Economic science. Second, the module is focused on understanding what is an economic experiment and how it is different from experimental practices in Psychology. Finally, the module helps to develop critical thinking with respect to the results of economic research. Students will have a chance to train their ability to be conscious readers of economic studies and integrate evidence from various sources. In the 2nd module at the 2nd year, students will also acquire skills to work and use in their research projects naturalistic stimuli, as part of behavioral and neuroscientific research.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Learn to consider and discuss current issues of empirical science: replication crisis, publication bias, and research misconduct.
- Learn to consider and discuss roles of science in society.
- Learn to consider their practical career plans before/after getting degree
- Learn to plan and work on their own research projects independently.
- Learn to present and discuss their own research projects
- Learn to understand, present and discuss results
- The students will learn about good practices on data collection, analyses and software tools and have the opportunity to discuss practical aspects in preparing their own research projects.
Course Contents
- Career design
- Logic, Probability, and Statistics
- Science in society
- Working with Open Datasets in Neuroscience Research
- Application of naturalistic stimuli in cognitive studies
- Data collection and analyses
Assessment Elements
- Year 1, Module 1-2: Two essays
- Year 1 (2023/2024 year) - 3-4 modules - final test
Interim Assessment
- 2025/2026 2nd moduleThe grade for two essays (Year 1, two essays, 0.5 of final grade each)
- 2025/2026 4th moduleYear 1 final test + Year 1 two essays (0.5+0.5)
Bibliography
Recommended Core Bibliography
- Denes Szucs, & John P. A. Ioannidis. (2017). When Null Hypothesis Significance Testing Is Unsuitable for Research: A Reassessment. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00390/full
- Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Jeong-Yeon Lee, & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common Method Biases in Behavioral Research: A Critical Review of the Literature and Recommended Remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(5), 879. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879
- Reinhart, A. (2015). Statistics Done Wrong : The Woefully Complete Guide. San Francisco: No Starch Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=984483
- Satterthwaite, T. D., Elliott, M. A., Ruparel, K., Loughead, J., Prabhakaran, K., Calkins, M. E., … Gur, R. E. (2013). Neuroimaging of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsbas&AN=edsbas.A81FED49
Recommended Additional Bibliography
- Lakatos, I., Feyerabend, P., & Motterlini, M. (1999). For and Against Method : Including Lakatos’s Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=351279