Is it Hard to Study Neuroscience?

written by Adriana

Whether you are a college student deciding on the next steps in your educational journey or a professional, interested in neuroscience, you may wonder how hard it is to study neuroscience.

With more advanced research methods and technology development, neuroscience becomes one of the most popular majors chosen by US college students with 7,000 students graduating with Bachelor’s in neuroscience in the US.

Although brain and human behaviour are definitely fascinating topics, studying neuroscience has several challenges, making it a hard subject.

In this blog post, I will explain what makes studying neuroscience hard and share my tips that can help you make your learning journey easier.

Is it hard to study neuroscience?

Studying neuroscience is hard because you are expected to use statistical procedures and programming languages to design experiments and analyze data. You will learn about research techniques including eye-tracking, EEG, fMRI, and GSR and read scientific literature. Also, you need to be familiar with scientific and medical terminology, be able to manage time efficiently and have problem-solving and referencing skills.

Moreover, neuroscience is a rapidly developing field which requires you to learn consistently. Statistical and programming skills are essential for experiment design and data analysis, as they allow you to study the human brain and behaviour in combination with fMRI, EEG, SGR or eye-tracking.

Although designing experiments to answer neuroscience questions is definitely a unique and rewarding experience, it is a challenge as you have to be willing to learn a lot independently in a short period of time.

Studying neuroscience is based on developing critical thinking and problems solving skills, that’s why reading recent publications which use latin terminology and complex terms is a must-do.

Overall, it is hard as you have to efficiently manage your time between lab work and reading articles, write concise essays/reports and cite your work according to the guidelines.

As I am about to hand in my dissertation, I decided to reflect on my experience studying for a neuroscience degree, so here are the reasons why I think it’s a very hard degree to study.

8 Reasons Why Studying Neuroscience is Hard:

1. You have to use statistical procedures to conduct neuroscience experiments

As neuroscience is considered a ‘hard’ subject, it is based on statistics, which allows you to make sense of the data you have previously collected. For example, after recording eye movements and getting visual processing time, you may want to compare two groups using a statistical test.

Thus, you need to know how to distinguish between different tests, check your data type, filter outliers and ensure other factors do not affect your sample, as you may come up with an irrelevant breakthrough! (scanning dead fish in fMRI)

Without statistical analyses you are not able to interpret data and draw conclusions, thus any experiment you conduct relies on your statistical skills. When you know how to read and understand the results section in the research article, you can get better insights into the study.

2. You need to learn a variety of techniques: fMRI, EEG, SGR, eye-tracking

Since Neuroscience is a broad and evolving field, you may have to learn different methods during the lectures, in the lab or in your free time.

These techniques provide an opportunity to study the brain, for example, to record brain waves during the task (EEG), or attention point (eye-tracking).

Here you can see several methods we covered in our course:

eye-tracking, EEG, fMRI, GSR

Although you learn these techniques during the Bachelor’s or Master’s, you don’t know which one you will need in your future (if you choose to pursue a PhD or will be working in a research lab).

3. You have to be able to read and critically analyze scientific papers

Personally, I found neuroscience hard because of the reading we had to complete to understand one mechanism. Usually, one process may have several hypotheses and theories around it, which are supported by research, but still have gaps.

Reading several papers (several times) per day is cognitively demanding and requires a high amount of focus, determination, and critical thinking, thus I would classify studying neuroscience as “deep work”.

For example, you could follow this template to help you strategically approach the research article you are reading.

4. You have to be able to design and programme your own experiments (Matlab, psychtoolbox, cogent)

Many students on our course were actually surprised that we were expected to learn programming to study neuroscience!

Here’s a screenshot from Ana’s offer acceptance letter where course administrators highlighted the importance of numerical skills:

Studying programming specifically to design a psychological experiment from the scratch is a skill, but also a hard process. Given the idea that a student is new to programming, starting with coding in a new programme such as Matlab is challenging.

Although I enjoyed this process, it was a trial-error experience, which may be sometimes upsetting and stressful.

Here I share how I created my first experiment using Matlab and Psychtoolbox.

5. You have to know medical and scientific terminology

Neuroscience has several aspects similar to biology so including an understanding of complex scientific terms. It can be very overwhelming for a complete beginner to see scientific terms and Latin names of brain structures and concepts for the first time!

So, most of the time I had to translate these words into simple words. I found this open dictionary where you can check definitions of the processes and complex Latin names.

When studying neuroscience, you must be able to explain complex terms in your own words and be confident in naming brain structures such as the corpus callosum, insula, amygdala, DLPC, and default mode network.

Without doubts, the Latin skills I gained at the medical academy were useful as they helped me to learn names faster, and pronounce them correctly.

6. You have to be a quick learner because the field is changing and developing rapidly

The field of neuroscience is considerably new and is developing rapidly with the more advanced research, technology and available tools. What we knew before becomes a question since new studies reveal the opposite.

“In Neuroscience you always learn - there are too many questions without answers”

Adriana

student

Therefore, studying neuroscience is a turbulent process, as with each insight we get more questions, which still have to be answered.

7. You have to possess excellent time management and problem-solving skills

Studying neuroscience requires excellent time management skills and a flexible approach, since your assignments and experiments are not time-bound.

As mentioned earlier, studying neuroscience requires you to read lots of articles, whereas lab work can be affected at any time, eg. during the technical difficulty in the EEG lab we had to cancel testing and wait for a week.

8. You must know how to cite sources, support arguments and be concise

As with any other academic subject, neuroscience is based on building on your arguments. To do that efficiently you have to read papers and cite resources using the right formatting, meanwhile demonstrating your suggestions.

For example, in our course, we used APA referencing guide and had to ensure that each essay, and research project is in line with the requirements.

Personally, I found it challenging to explain the meaning of scientific concepts without writing an essay on them, but focusing only on the most important part.

For whom studying neuroscience may be less hard?

On the other hand, it’s not hard to study neuroscience when you have a background in Biology, Chemistry, Maths, Psychology or Programming, since these subjects are interlinked in the neuroscience field.

Although neuroscience and psychology are both studies about the brain and human behaviour, it is harder to study neuroscience than psychology as it includes more advanced levels of programming and statistical analyses.

However, when you are particularly interested in one area of neuroscience, you may specialise in it and tailor your research projects, PhD and work on investigating one topic which is easier than studying different areas.

If you enjoy working with meaningful data, related to the brain, human behaviour and neurophysiology, and testing individuals using EEG or eye tracking, then studying neuroscience will be a cognitively demanding but a very rewarding experience.

You can quantify measures of your interest

Similarly to Psychology, I found comparing different theories and models challenging and time-consuming, but as a neuroscience student I was able to quantify the measure I was interested in, eg. visual processing time using eye-tracking.

In order to do that efficiently, and have a clear hypothesis and aim, I had to review the literature on visual processing, compare different models, identify gaps and propose a new way how I can answer these questions.

Background in Biology, Physics and Programming may be useful

You can bring your knowledge and skills from other fields since neuroscience is based on several subjects interlinked, eg. a background in biomedicine will help you to understand neurophysiology, whereas a physics major will allow you to grasp ideas about how fMRI or EEG works.

Final Word

A Neuroscience degree, either Bachelor’s or a Master’s, can provide you with an opportunity to develop programming and statistical skills, which are the main challenge and the core skills of a neuroscientist.

Without doubts, studying neuroscience is hard as it requires you to constantly learn in practice, ask open questions and shift between Biology, Chemistry, Psychology and Programming.

So, it is a question, of whether spending hours and hours reviewing the literature, thinking about undiscovered neuroscience areas and solving problems in the lab is something you enjoy.

Overall, if you have a strong interest in one area of neuroscience and have previously done science, studying the brain may be the most rewarding challenge in your life.

What are your thoughts on studying neuroscience? Have you done any neuroscience modules or practicals? Let us know in the comments section below.

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A&A

Hi there!

Thank you for stopping by! We are neuroscientists by day and digital creators by night who are passionate about self-development, personal growth and a healthy mindset. 🧠

We met when studying Master’s degree in Clinical, Social and Cognitive Neuroscience at City, University of London and instantly realised that we had a lot in common!

Let’s see what it is! ➡️