Program Overview

Program Overview

The Master track Brain and Cognition in Society focuses on how theoretical and methodological knowledge from the field of brain and cognition can help address applied business and societal issues.

Program Details

• Program Type: Master
• Study Load: 60 EC
• Duration: 1 year
• Language of Instruction: English
• Program Format: Full-time, Daytime education

Program Description

The primary focus of the Master track Brain and Cognition in Society is how theoretical and methodological knowledge from the field of brain and cognition can help address applied business and societal issues. What happens in society is in the end all caused by human behaviour. Whether it's about the way we behave towards one another or how businesses are trying to sell you their products, or how politicians or NGO's are trying to get your attention. That's why psychology and neuroscience are vital.

Learning Objectives

After completing the Master track Brain and Cognition in Society:

• You can perform an effective search in the scientific literature to obtain relevant information on a particular applied question
• You can work out a concrete research plan based on an applied question and you can communicate results in both written and oral format to a general audience
• You can translate research results (either from the literature or from one's own research) into knowledge and advice that is directly applicable, as well as generalize scientific principles to societal and business contexts
• You can give judgments on ethical as well as practical aspects (e.g. which conclusions may or may not be drawn based on research results)

About the Program Group

The track is offered by the programme group Brain and Cognition, a sub department of the Department of Psychology. This sub department‘s research programme focusses on the cognitive processes in our brain which form the groundwork of attaining and processing information: perception, memory, attention, language, learning, consciousness, sleep and emotion.

Research Areas

The goal of the research programme of our group is to obtain a better understanding of the nature of human cognition and its neural basis. The programme emphasizes theory development, attempts to base explanations for cognitive phenomena on neurobiological principles, and has a focus on using cognitive research to understand clinical findings. The research covers three sub programmes:

• Perception and Action, which focuses on how the human brain processes information and transforms it into adaptive behavior
• Memory and Language, which aims to identify the processes involved in retrieval from memory and the factors affecting memory retrieval
• Consciousness, which aims to explain the difference between conscious and non-conscious information processing and to identify the neural substrate of this difference. The different sub programmes are highly integrated and there is extensive collaboration across the sub programmes. Topics within these fields of expertise may be very suitable subjects for Master’s theses.