Seeking advice for Neuroscience programs

I'm a final year BSc Neurobiology student and I've been offered places on these courses: MSc Neuroscience at KCL and MScR Integrated Neuroscience at Edinburgh.

Does anyone here have experience of studying on any of these courses? I'm having a hard time choosing between them. My ultimate aim would be to apply for PhD after completing my masters.

Thanks a lot.

I'm a final year BSc Neurobiology student and I've been offered places on these courses: MSc Neuroscience at KCL and MScR Integrated Neuroscience at Edinburgh.

Does anyone here have experience of studying on any of these courses? I'm having a hard time choosing between them. My ultimate aim would be to apply for PhD after completing my masters.

Thanks a lot.

I have the same offers from both places! I'm interested to know if we'll be studying together haha. I'm leaning towards Ed, because of the research component as mentioned above. And it's for the very reason that I don't have much undergrad research experience. Also, I prefer Ed taking location and financial factors in mind. Plus, I feel that there are so many more topics covered under the MScR, which is what I wanted. All the best for your decision!
I want to go on and do a PhD as well, in Neuroimmunology. @QuentinM, would you happen to know a little about the progress in research in this area? I'm interested in the roles of microglia and astrocytes in CNS damage and I'm trying to find labs that work on this.

Neuroimmunology is a pretty hot topic at the moment. I think you would be hard pressed to find a neuroscience department in the UK without at least one person investigating this in some capacity. I think because gliosis (activation of astrocytes/microglia in response to inflammatory signals) has been identified in a lot of neurological disorders (ALS, Parkinsons, Alzheimers...) and elsewhere (e.g. obesity) it's of great interest. I think there are still enough areas unexplored to keep it growing a bit more for a while yet (in my opinion-I don't work directly in this field but am loosely aware of the stuff happening in some parts of it).

after gaining a PhD, do you become a neuroscientist by getting involved with research and uni teaching etc?

what’s the career progression and salary like?

A PhD will involve a long research project, so by carrying on with other research project you stay as a "neuroscientist". Usually post-PhD, for those that are keen on staying in research they'll spend a few years doing postdoctoral work in various labs. Many stay in this role quite successfully, some choose to then go on to become a "Principal Investigator" or "PI", which basically means starting your own lab. Usually within a few years of becoming a PI the University will put pressure on you to start lecturing for them. I don't know how easy that sounds, to be honest it really isn't as the funding applications for work to support you as a PI are incredibly competitive and hence many don't progress beyond this stage (completely understandably IMO).

Salary wise, you can easily google the salaries for these different stages, but off the top of my head:
*I'm on about ~£15.5k a year for my PhD
*Somewhere in the region of 27-36k a year as a Postdoc depending on your experience, the position etc.
*Lecturers and PI's somewhere in the region of £50k a year, increasing with seniority

I've tried to give ranges showing the breadth of possible options as you would see quite a bit of variability online

Thanks! sorry for the all questions, i'm in final year of biomedical science and looking to do a msc in neuroscience.

Do you get much support from others (i.e. other researchers) when you are completing a Msc or PhD?

Within neuroscience, what lab techniques are most frequent other than brain imaging? Do you find it difficult?

What are the core modules in neuroscience? i.e. effect of drug abuse, learning, memory, epilepsy, dementia, alzheimer's?

Neuroimmunology is a pretty hot topic at the moment. I think you would be hard pressed to find a neuroscience department in the UK without at least one person investigating this in some capacity. I think because gliosis (activation of astrocytes/microglia in response to inflammatory signals) has been identified in a lot of neurological disorders (ALS, Parkinsons, Alzheimers...) and elsewhere (e.g. obesity) it's of great interest. I think there are still enough areas unexplored to keep it growing a bit more for a while yet (in my opinion-I don't work directly in this field but am loosely aware of the stuff happening in some parts of it).

No problem

Depends what you mean by support? It really depends on what lab/research team you are in. Some PI's are far too busy to support you directly and palm you off on others (or actually just leave you to it), others are much more active.

You'll have to be more specific than "neuroscience" if you want to know about most common lab techniques. I focus more on molecular neuroscience/neurodegenerative disease angles in my own work personally, and I've never done any patient brain imaging, I've done minimal imaging of brain tissue sections of mice, my current work focuses on imaging cultured neurons. There are so many techniques at the molecular, biochemical or clinical level that you would need to be a lot more specific-although to be honest I wouldn't say there are any lab techniques that are more frequent (except maybe immunochemical/fluorescent staining).

I wouldn't call any of those core modules, all of those would be more specialist modules to prepare you for possible research in that area. I couldn't tell you much about drug abuse or epilepsy, for example, and people who research those areas probably couldn't discuss my work that much either. Core modules would probably be basics of molecular neuroscience and systems neuroscience, I expect.

Thanks! I'm looking specifically at cognitive neuroscience

Ah ok that helps

Core modules wise, I expect most courses will focus on systems neuroscience (brain structure and function). In the case of this course you almost certainly will get experience analysing medical imaging in most courses and in many you will get the chance to actually perform some as well in a research capacity. Most research skills like critical analysis would be the other things, but you'll have been exposed to that in your first degree I expect.

Hey thanks for the useful answers

i'm applying to the Msc cognitive neuroscience programme now and i've been asked if I have any relevant work experience:

- care home, pharmacy and GP work shadowing wouldn't be relevant right?

It would be relevant if you can state how it has provided you with relevant experience pertaining to neuroscience or how it has developed the skills you would need as a neuroscientist/researcher.

For example, I included my healthcare experience of triaging in A+E for 3 years as I had frequently encountered patients suffering from neurological issues and I was often the liaison for neurology, exposing me to the clinical applications neuroscience can offer.

However, I also chose to do my dissertation on a neuroscience topic and I was also a laboratory volunteer for a separate neuroscience research project.

I would advise trying to get laboratory experience if you haven't already.

Any work experience is relevant if you can translate it to neuroscience - i.e. perhaps many of the residents in your care home had degenerative neurological illnesses such as dementia? Dementia is a huge research area currently for neuroscience.