Best Accredited Universities for Doctoral Phd program in Cognitive Science

Graduate students in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences are among the sharpest, most innovative brain scientists to be found anywhere. In a given year the department admits 5 to 10 percent of applicants, and the PhD program is consistently ranked among the best in the world. Students work hard to get here, and they are vital to the department in many ways. The students often take on riskier projects and pilot studies that probe the edges of the technical and scientific knowledge.

Graduate students in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences work with an advisor and advisory committee to pursue an innovative and rigorous program of original research. Students should aim to complete their PhD in five to six years.

The Department of Cognitive Science PhD program’s primary goal is to train a new generation of cognitive scientists who can meld multiple existing disciplines into a new, genuinely integrated science of the mind/brain.

A secondary goal is to train graduates who are competitive for positions in traditional disciplinary departments at research universities. Because many of the most exciting research developments recognized within the related traditional disciplines arise through interdisciplinary research, the training in cognitive science offered by the department can promote a graduate’s attractiveness as a candidate for positions in a variety of departments.

For example, a student who is studying language processing in normal and brain-damaged subjects, and is trained in the methods of both cognitive neuropsychology and neuroimaging, with a solid foundation in theoretical linguistics and additional coursework in psychology or neuroscience, is potentially employable in a number of departments. A student with in-depth training in theoretical phonology, a solid background in computational and psychological approaches to phonological research, and ancillary training in other branches of linguistics is well positioned to conduct state-of-the-art research and teaching valuable for both a linguistics department and a cognitive science program.

The training we offer in cognitive science is highly interdisciplinary, strongly theoretically oriented, and integrated to an extent only possible within a department of cognitive science.

Brown University's graduate program in Cognitive Science is designed to prepare students for careers as scientists and teachers who will make contributions to society in academic or applied settings.

Brown University's Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences (CLPS) is dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of mind, brain, behavior and language. Brown University's Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences (CLPS) offers three Ph.D. programs: in Cognitive Science, Linguistics and Psychology. Ph.D. students are accepted by the department and formally choose one of the three programs. The department does not accept students interested in obtaining terminal master's degrees.

Brown University's graduate program in Cognitive Science is designed to prepare students for careers as scientists and teachers who will make contributions to society in academic or applied settings. Students will gain broad competence in the scientific issues and experimental, theoretical, and/or computational methods relevant across fields of cognitive science and will develop expertise in one or more research specializations. Programs of study are highly individualized; decisions about research and coursework are made in close collaboration with a research advisor and graduate committee chosen by each student. Students may change areas, programs, and/or advisors as their interests develop. Students are also encouraged to collaborate with faculty members who are not their primary advisors.

A designated emphasis (DE) is an interdisciplinary graduate minor. Graduate students in any Berkeley Ph.D. program may apply to join the DE in Cognitive Science. Students must be admitted to the DE prior to taking the Ph.D. qualifying exam.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary science of the mind. It is characterized by a focus on classic foundational questions about the mind, for example: What aspects of knowledge are innate? What aspects of thought are uniquely human? Is human thought rational? And it pursues these unifying core questions through methods drawn from a variety of disciplines, most commonly psychology, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy.

Within this overall picture, there is one aspect of cognitive science that is theoretically central: that is computation. Computation serves both as a model of the mind, and as a set of precise tools for investigating it. Cognitive science thus represents an engagement with fundamental questions of the mind that is computationally oriented but is focused on human rather than artificial intelligence. In today’s environment, cognitive science has the potential to prepare students and citizens for a world in which the intersection of minds, machines, data, and inference is increasingly important, yet in which the centrality of the human mind to that intersection is sometimes obscured, or treated only superficially. Computational principles also serve as a shared lingua franca that allows psychologists, linguists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and others to communicate with each other. For this reason, our DE emphasizes both interdisciplinary breadth (familiarity with substantive issues in disciplines other than the student’s own), and computational thinking (fluency in the lingua franca).

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind and deals with the nature of perception, motor organization, memory, language, thinking, consciousness, and learning and development. It investigates these topics from a number of methodological perspectives, including behavioral evidence for how these systems operate and formal, symbolic, and biological evidence on the computational and neural machinery that underlies them. Research on these topics comes centrally from several traditionally distinct fields: experimental psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. Other relevant disciplines biology, anthropology, economics, decision sciences, and education are also part of this burgeoning field.

Professors and researchers from the departments of linguistics, philosophy, neurology, psychology, Spanish and Portuguese, biology, and others, have agreed to work with students to develop individual programs of study that fit the interests of the student.

The Concentration in Cognitive Science is supported by the Feldstein Veron Cognitive Science Fund and by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

For centuries philosophers and scientists of many stripes have sought to understand the relationship between the brain and mind, sometimes described as the hardest problem in science. How is it that the human brain, three pounds of matter, supports so many faculties that distinguish our species from all other life forms: consciousness, language, science, mathematics, morality, music, art, and We need good theories of the brain, the mind, and of the linking between them, the mind brain.

On the mind side, cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind and deals with the nature of perception, motor organization, memory, language, thinking, consciousness, and learning and development. It investigates these topics from a number of methodological perspectives, including behavioral evidence for how these systems operate and formal, symbolic, and biological evidence on the computational and neural machinery that underlies them. Research on these topics comes centrally from several traditionally distinct fields: experimental psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. Other relevant disciplines biology, anthropology, economics, decision sciences, and education are also part of this burgeoning field.

The Cognitive Science Society was formed in 1979, just after the Society for Neuroscience. In recent years the interdisciplinary cognitive sciences have grown in stature and prominence, both in the US and around the world. There is a renamed section of the National Academy of Sciences and a new National Research Council Board that cover these areas virtually all major research universities offer graduate and postdoctoral programs in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience, with variation in the character of the programs depending on the interdisciplinary strengths of each university.

The Ph.D. program in Brain and Cognitive Science at the University of Southern California provides comprehensive training for students with a keen interest in understanding cognition, motivation, emotion and perception in terms of the underlying brain processes and manifested behaviors. The Faculty have world reknowned expertise in a wide range of areas. They prepare the graduates to be at the forefront of knowledge creation in one of the most exciting fields of the time, at the confluence of psychology, biology and neuroscience.

Cognitive Science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind. This multidisciplinary field uses both knowledge and methods from a variety of fields. Tufts has built up a world-renowned faculty in Cognitive Science, some of whom have been prominent since the birth of the field. The joint PhD program offers a joint degree in Cognitive Science and one of its four host disciplines.

Doctoral degrees require the fulfillment of the specific department requirements including the number of courses with grades of S (satisfactory) or at least a B-, as well as successful completion of the qualifying examination and doctoral dissertation.

Because students come to the brain and cognitive sciences (BCS) discipline with a wide range of backgrounds, the PhD program is designed to introduce students to parts of the field they might not previously have studied, and to prepare them for advanced work.

This core curriculum covers a range of topics in perception, action, cognition, language, learning, and development, each examined from the perspectives of behavioral, computational, and neural science.

Generally students complete most of their course work during the first two years. During the third year students take a qualifying exam covering the scholarly literature surrounding their area of specialization, and thereafter typically devote themselves fully to their research. The PhD is awarded upon the completion of a dissertation containing original research in the field.

The Cognition and Brain Science specialty area for the Psychology Ph.D. program trains students to develop a thorough understanding of diverse aspects of cognition and neural mechanisms for neural processing. Students learn about theories of cognitive phenomena and the neurobiological bases of cognition and behavior. Students study the major methods used to measure various components of cognition and neuroscience. These components include attention, sensation and perception, working memory, episodic memory, cognitive control, language, metacognition, spatial cognition, mindfulness and problem solving. Please visit the Cognition and Brain Science Research page for more information regarding research conducted in this area.

Students are encouraged to gain a strong background in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience, with exposure to a variety of fundamental areas of general psychology, while also developing a particular research concentration. The program is designed to provide students with intensive concentration in a selected specialty by allowing each student to tailor coursework and research experience to match personal needs.

The Cognitive Science Ph.D. program provides broad training in neurological processes and phenomena; the experimental methods, results, and theories from the study of psychology, language, and social and cultural issues; and the studies of computational mechanisms. The first year is devoted to familiarizing the student with the findings and current problems in cognitive science through Foundations and Issues courses.

In the second year, basic courses and laboratory rotations are completed, with the major emphasis on the completion of a year-long research project. Future years are spent completing the advancement to candidacy requirements and doing the thesis research. Throughout the program, there are frequent faculty-student interactions, including special lectures by the faculty or invited speakers and the weekly informal research discussions and cognitive science seminar.