PhD in Integrative Neuroscience - Years Two to Four Course Structure
During the first week of Year 2, the student, the Programme Director and Deputy and the prospective supervisors will agree on a research plan and the principal supervisor. The principal supervisor will determine the ‘Home School’ of the student for Years 2-4. Prior to that, the Home Schools for all students will be the School of Biosciences (Home School of the programme director and Personal tutor of the students) to foster a sense of identity and to provide a strong, peer-support network.
Additional training courses
As mentioned above, some training courses will continue into Year 2. An example of an existing course is in Human Imaging. This course, based in CUBRIC, initially covers Safety. An MRI safety lecture (delivered by an experienced MRI Neuroradiographer) is followed by a tour of the MRI suite to train users in safe operation of the facilities. Potential users are then assessed orally by Profs Wise, Jones or Evans to ensure understanding of procedures for safe MRI scanning. This must be passed for the investigator to become a probationary approved user of the MRI scanner. This procedure also includes person safety training and basic CPR.
There is then a functional and structural MRI 4-day intensive course based around the FSL (FMRIB Software Library) software for analysis of structural and functional MRI data. This includes 4 hours of lectures and 3 hours of practical work each day. The intensive course covers both the theory and practice of functional and structural brain image analysis. Background concepts and the practicalities of analyses are taught in detailed lectures; these are interleaved with hands-on practical sessions where attendees learn how to carry out analysis for themselves on real data. By the end of the course, attendees should be able to fully analyse their own fMRI and MRI data sets. There is, in addition, a separate one day course on MEG data acquisition and analysis provided by the MEG lab manager (Dr Muthukumaraswamy). Other examples of advanced courses available in Year 2 include Postgenomic Biosciences, Computing for Bioinformatics, Genetic Epidemiology, Animal Imaging Techniques (EMRIC).
