PhD in Cognitive, Computational and Social Neurosciences (CCSN)
Lucca, Italy
DURATION
3 up to 4 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
21 Jun 2024
EARLIEST START DATE
04 Nov 2024
TUITION FEES
Request tuition fees
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* no tuition fees; students beyond the tuition waiver also receive a scholarship €16,243 per year for up to three years
Introduction
CCSN is an international Ph.D. program hosted by the IMT School, one of the seven Schools of Excellence in Italy, and one of the highest-rated graduate schools in Europe, according to the most recent U-Multirank survey. The IMT School provides rigorous training and close supervision in a variety of disciplines in the social, cultural, cognitive, and natural sciences, welcoming multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches at their boundaries.
The IMT School is a truly international environment with students from all around the world. The School has a record of placing students in top research universities, policy-making institutions, and companies. English is the official language of the School.
This research-based, multidisciplinary track focuses on cognitive, computational, and social neurosciences, and integrates basic neuroscience methods with traditional experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The track prepares researchers capable of developing innovative research strategies and creative ideas to monitor, understand, and predict human behavior, mind, and complexity.
Currently, one of the most significant scientific challenges is understanding the human brain. Today, human neuroscience has made remarkable progress in understanding the basic aspects of brain functional organization, primarily thanks to the advent of neuroimaging that provided scientists of various disciplines with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the neurobiological bases of mental activities, in the healthy brain or the presence of disease.
Different disciplines have consequently begun to rely on neuroscience research methods to develop novel integrated approaches which, from economics to social sciences, from aesthetics to philosophy, seek a neural correlate of human behavior through multidisciplinary dialogues.
The Ph.D. Program in Cognitive, Computational, and Social Neurosciences (CCSN) aims to provide the theoretical, methodological, instrumental, and cultural skills necessary for studying the brain and mind, the interpretation and representation of the external world, and the cognition of human behaviors.
The descriptions of some examples of active projects and research themes are available here. The track is nonetheless interested in accepting research projects and themes proposed by candidates other than those described and, in general, in identifying with the students the research themes that best suit their skills and interests.
All Research units at the IMT School organize regular seminars by external and internal faculty members which complement the coursework with exposure to the latest research. Speakers at the seminars are leading researchers from all around the world. Please look at the MoMiLab Events page for a comprehensive list of past seminars and visiting professors.
The CCSN track is part of the Network of European Neuroscience Schools (NENS), which represents over 200 graduate neuroscience schools and programs across 27 European countries.
What CCSN offers
- International, vibrant, and interdisciplinary research environment
- Rigorous training in cognitive, computational, and social neurosciences
- Opportunity to meet leading researchers who visit IMT every year
- Free double room accommodation for 3 years
- Desk on the campus
- Everyday free meals (lunch and dinner) at the IMT canteen for 3 years
- Scholarship €16,243/year for up to four years
- Participation in exchange programs
- Double degree programs
Ideal Students
The CCSN program welcomes Ph.D. candidates with a general level education in one of the following areas: psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, biology, physics, computer science, social science, human science, engineering, logic, and philosophy of science, behavioral science or in contiguous areas. The ideal candidate is interested in doing research in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science, without necessarily having previous training in these fields.
Admissions
Scholarships and Funding
All students enrolled in the PhD program receive a scholarship of €1,353.58/month, which includes pension contributions and results in a net salary of €1,195.48/month for 3 years, extendable up to 4 years.
For the first three years, all students are offered on-campus housing and meals at the IMT canteen for free, which can be valued as an additional benefit of at least €800/month. Furthermore, they are given additional financial support for mobility abroad, participation in international academic conferences, summer and winter schools, and other similar events.
Curriculum
The Program is organized into a single training curriculum but is characterized by the significant interdisciplinary nature of its approach. It integrates basic training in neuroscience and experimental psychology with studying mental activities and cognitive functions in the psychophysiological, neurobiological, neuropsychological, psycholinguistic, computational, social, philosophical, logical, ethical, and educational fields.
Furthermore, in line with the multidisciplinary nature of the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the Ph.D. The program promotes the study of the psychophysiological correlates of cognitive functions and human behavior with particular attention to questions of a transversal, translational, and clinical nature.
Recently, in the context of a dialogue with the economic, social, engineering, and humanities sciences, the introduction of neuroscientific methodologies and themes has led to a greater valorization of the experimental approach and an innovative characterization of the neurobiological correlates of human behavior, integrated with social, computational and data analytics aspects.
The didactic and experimental organization of the Ph.D. program has been built and revised over the years precisely to adopt this multidisciplinary approach, aiming to offer a broad educational overview, fundamental in the field of modern neuroscience both for pursuing an academic and experimental research career and for open up to new labor markets that increasingly require transversal figures.
The central teaching and research topics within the Program concern perception through the sense organs, cognitive functions, the study of emotions and social interactions, the sleep-wake cycle, language, and conceptual representation.
On this basis, the Program opens up to advanced methods of processing electrophysiological and neuroimaging data, the study of the psychophysiological correlates of decision-making processes in the economic and social fields, the application of neurosciences in forensic and juridical areas, the study of the cognitive aspects of the visual arts, to the translational applications of neuroscience in the bioengineering and neurorehabilitation fields.
In this way, the Program intends to address current problems and challenges of great social and strategic importance and solid relevance in a long-term perspective.
To this end, the Program promotes a strong integration of concepts, analytical techniques, and methodological skills from other disciplinary sectors to provide students with complete mastery of the most advanced analytical tools, aiming to train the new generation of researchers who face the complexity of mental functions and human behavior with specific skills of analysis and interpretation combined with complementary and integrated tools.
In the first year, students will attend multiple courses. After completing the required courses in the curriculum, students engage in their research under the guidance of the faculty members from one of the research groups.
All students are encouraged to spend part of their studies abroad, both within the Erasmus+ framework and through ad hoc mobility agreements. Teaching is mostly carried out by members of the MOMILAB research unit, with significant 'contaminations' from members of AXES, NETWORKS, SYSMA, and LYNX.
The planned courses for the year 2024/2025 will be organized in seven modules:
- Introductory
- Neuroimaging
- Reasoning and Inference
- Electrophysiology
- Research Topics
- Behavioral Data Analysis
- Statistics and Programming
Research Infrastructures
The students will have access to the Open Lab (equipped for EEG, psychophysics and psychophysiology recording), to the research infrastructures of the joint laboratory with the Neuroscience Lab (the conjoint research lab with Innovation Center Intesa Sanpaolo) and to the OpenLab of the "Economic Resilience" Project and Digital” (RED) of the Department of Excellence present at the School, at the CRONONC-Lab Laboratory (integrated CRONObiology and NeuroCardiology) for research on sleep, wakefulness and their reciprocal interactions (equipped for polysomnographic measurements at the 'Gabriele Monasterio' Tuscan Foundation of Pisa) and to external MRI structures (1.5T, 3T and 7T scanners available in Pisa and Massa at the 'Gabriele Monasterio' Tuscany Foundation and the IRCCS Stella Maris Pisa Foundation).
Ph.D. students will also have the opportunity to be involved in collaborative research programs with national and international institutions, including - among others - University of Pisa, Fondazione Toscana ‘Gabriele Monasterio’ in Pisa, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, University of Siena, University of Pavia, Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan, Department of Psychology of the University of Turin, University of Padua, the CIMeC – Center for Mind/Brain Sciences University of Trento, University of Virginia, Center for Consciousness and Sleep at the University of Wisconsin, Institute of Psychology & Institute of Neuroscience - University of Louvain, Massachusetts Eye & Ear of the Harvard Medical School.
Career Opportunities
The primary purpose of the CCSN curriculum is to train researchers with in-depth knowledge of the methods required for the most modern cognitive and computational neuroscience approaches, applied in general to the characterization and management of cultural and socio-economic systems.
In line with the strong interactions and didactic and experimental integration carried out at the School, the curriculum in CCSN aims to offer a broad educational background to pursue an academic career and experimental research and to open up new labor markets that always address more transversal figures.
Based on the excellent placement carried out so far, past graduates in psychological and neuroscience disciplines from the IMT School are currently working at leading universities, international institutions, research and clinical centers, companies, and other private companies.
The job placement opportunities are mainly related to the various disciplines of the ERC sector SH4 'The Human Mind and Its Complexity' and of the CUN 11 macro-area (Area 11 - Historical sciences, philosophical, pedagogical and psychological) and contiguous areas.