The Ultimate Battle: Neuroscience vs Psychology - Which is Harder?

written by Adriana

If you have just graduated with A levels in Chemistry and Biology, but spend free time reading psychology journals, you may feel stuck between deciding whether you want to study medicine, psychology, or another science degree.

Making a choice as an 18-year-old in the fast-paced world of technology is very challenging and we know how you feel because we had to go through this too.

Luckily, you can do your homework before deciding on your next step!

That’s why in this blog post I will compare neuroscience and psychology disciplines from the student’s perspective.

Hopefully, it can help you to decide which path is right for you.

I will share how difficult I found psychology and neuroscience according to 5 pillars: content, terminology, people skills, independent work, programming, and statistics.

Is neuroscience harder than psychology?

Neuroscience is harder than psychology because it relies more on the interdisciplinary application of the sciences such as biochemistry and physics, that use complex methods, statistical analyses and programming. Psychology is a more flexible discipline that gives you the opportunity to transfer interpersonal, numerical and research skills into a business, clinical practice, management, or education.

When studying neuroscience you need to learn the theory to be able to explain complex processes and construct a research question for your investigation.

In psychology, you may need only basic statistical skills, but in neuroscience, you may have to learn how to modify the code, perform EEG, fMRI, eye-tracking and translate recorded physiological data into numbers using programming skills.

Also, a big part of neuroscience takes place in the research lab, where you are working on your research question and it involves recruiting participants and analysing samples or data.

Now let’s discuss each discipline on more detail.

Content

How difficult was it to read and understand the subject content?

Neuroscience 9/10

Psychology 7/10

I’m studying Neuroscience for my Master’s degree and studied Psychology for my undergrad so I noticed lots of differences between the two areas.

Although five years ago neuroscience and psychology had a shared module (cognitive psychology) and the line was blurred, I can see how both fields have evolved.

Psychology:

Since I didn’t study psychology at the A levels in Lithuania, I was new to the vast amount of theories, philosophers and subjective explanations of how the mind works. We started with the introductory module, which is a revision of A-levels Psychology for those who had taken it at school.

We covered topics such as eating disorders, relationships, attachment theories, and aggression and had to be able to discuss these topics, indicating the pros and cons of each theory as well as giving example studies adding evidence.

Thus, there was lots of time spent on debates, and new questions emerged from each topic as we were learning more.

Personally, I enjoyed Health Psychology as we learned more about the link between lifestyle changes and how psychologists can help to facilitate the implementation of lifestyle interventions.

This skill of recognising the theory behind the behaviour and how to help a person change may be very attractive and in demand, if you think about going into clinical psychology, counselling or health psychology.

It was challenging to choose modules, as they were so diverse—you could have coaching psychology, evolution and human behaviour or cyberpsychology.

Yes, it’s great to be able to have a choice and learn more from experts in the area during one term, but how you make the links between such diverse topics, prepare for the exams, and memorise theories, it’s your opportunity which requires a “growth” mindset.

Some people say that most psychology is based upon beliefs (like philosophy). During my undergraduate degree, I had to learn about philosophers and sociology, which shows a strong link between psychology and other social sciences.

Indeed, if you have a strong argument, and you are able to justify it, based on observations and theories, then you have the essential skill to study psychology – critical thinking.

So, if I had to rate the Psychology degree overall, I would give it 7 out of 10 for content.

Neuroscience:

While psychology focuses more on analysing how people think and what affects their behaviour, what therapies may be effective to treat specific conditions, neuroscience is more focused on the scientific side of the mind – the central nervous system and behaviour.

In most of my lectures, I found myself studying biology, physics and chemistry, as these subjects are interlinked with neuroscience. For example, if you start a bachelor’s in neuroscience you will have a solid module on neuropharmacology, thus the previous course in chemistry would be beneficial.

Content in the neuroscience course was based on the ‘hard’ STEM sciences. It included learning neuropharmacology, physiological underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease, action potentials or K-spikes of EEG as well as discussing breakthrough research.

If you are interested to learn whether neuroscience is considered a hard or soft science, check out this blog post.

The key challenge was to grasp the content related to fMRI, EEG, and eye-tracking techniques, as we had to critique research studies, which used these techniques.

Besides understanding why this specific method is used, and how the experiment is designed, we had to stop and take a moment to think does it add to the neuroscience field and why the given findings are important.

That’s why I’m rating the content of the Neuroscience degree as 9 out of 10.

Terminology

How difficult was it to read and understand the terms?

Neuroscience 9/10

Psychology 7/10

In psychology, the terminology you learn is complex due to different words used to describe the condition, or phenomenon, eg. availability heuristic, belief perseverance, and cognitive dissonance.

Since these words are widely used in English and in daily life, it may be easier to relate to them, and memorise them by having an example in your mind, that you can relate to.

In neuroscience, you will gain a more specialised “dictionary” of the terms, related to the brain, nervous system, chemical process and neurophysiology.

For example, you will know what are astrocytes, ATP pumps, cerebral ataxia, saccade latency or neurulation. Since you are going to be analysing physiological processes, you will combine biology and chemistry foundation to enhance studying the brain.

On my first day in neuroscience, I felt I entered a different world where Latin was the spoken language!

People skills vs independent work

How difficult was it to keep the balance between working alone and with people?

Psychology 9/10

interviews
focused groups
teamwork
role-plays

Neuroscience 7/10

lab work
participants recruitmnet
testing and explaining instructions

Whether you decide to study psychology or neuroscience, you will spend a lot of time working in a team, eg. neuroscience lab, testing participants or conducting interviews.

However, in psychology, you are more exposed to simulations and role-plays, as one of the key skills you need to develop to become a psychologist is communication.

Good communication skills mean having active listening skills, empathy and patience.

For example, during the coaching module, we could practice coaching with each other using GROWTH, OSKAR or CBT-based models, reflecting afterwards on what we could do differently next time to improve our sessions.

Be aware, that this is just one example, and if you become a psychology researcher you may spend most of the time coding psychological experiments and working on your laptop, therefore there is lots of flexibility in the psychology discipline after 3 or 4 years of the undergraduate degree.

In contrast, in neuroscience your time will totally depend on your project, the skills you are developing and how quickly you learn statistics or programming.

During your degree you may be working with the team on a project, completing an internship under supervision as we did data collection by running EEG experiments, but besides this, it is a very lonely work.

I must admit that 50% of my course I spend studying independently in the library, learning brain structures and modifying the Matlab code, which was challenging, but rewarding in the end.

From my experience, social skills are not so relevant to a neuroscience career, because your ability to solve technical issues, design an authentic feasible experiment or ability to think critically is more important as it will make a difference.

With a ready-to-do attitude (eg. learn programming or solving an unexpected problem with EEG) and the ability to clearly communicate (eg. explain instructions of the experimental task to the participants), you may succeed despite practical obstacles you can’t prepare for.

Clear structure and module choice

How difficult was it to follow course structure and choose modules?

Psychology 10/10

5 main Psychology areas
Accredited by BPS

Neuroscience 5/10

Variety of optional modules
No clear structure
No mandatory modules except for research methods

Whether you are stuck between neuroscience and psychology, it may be worth looking at the curriculum offered at different universities.

If you choose to study neuroscience, you will be learning more about biological processes, using scientific terms, run practicals investigating human behaviour and the brain with the more complex measures. Although it depends on the course, in neuroscience you are trained to become a researcher and pursue a PhD.

So, if you find biological sciences difficult, and even thinking about chemistry or programming makes you “freeze”, then neuroscience may be a taught challenge.

However, due to emerging novel technologies, neuroscience subfields and professionals with specific expertise, you may need only basic knowledge of the area of your interest.

If we compare studying Neuroscience vs Psychology at the BSc level, you may see the main differences in the curriculum.

Although two courses include Cognitive Psychology and Research Methods, neuroscience has more specific subjects, eg. Neuroanatomy, Pharmacology and Physiology.

As you study the human brain and behaviour, you have to learn physiological processes, and names of brain structures or even take part in a practical, such as brain dissection.

Personally, I found neuroscience more practice-based and “wet”, since we had to review previous studies, and focus on a variety of methods (fMRI, gene extraction, antibody-antigen assay). It required me to stay focused for a long time and synthesise information from other fields.

To my surprise, at some point in my Master’s, I felt I was studying physics since my project involved visual processing!

Thus, in neuroscience, you don’t know where it may lead you.

In contrast, you can see that psychology course includes the core main areas: biological, cognitive, social & personality, developmental, and mental health.

Therefore, I would say that neuroscience is harder than psychology in general, although it depends on where you specialise.

Programming in neuroscience vs psychology

How hard was programming in this course?

Psychology 2/10

support
advice
no programming

Neuroscience 9/10

Matlab with SPSS
specific type of physiological data, which requires an expert to support you

You may study psychology without having to go into the lab, just administering questionnaires, writing reports, and discussing your findings in the light of theories and previous studies.

It is hard, as you have to read a lot and memorise lots of concepts, and theories and be able to critique them, but does not require you to study programming.

For example, when I did my minor in psychology we only used SPSS and collected data from a programme created by a researcher working on campus. Thus, a technician or a behavioural scientist may complete the programming part.

Without a doubt, I needed my numerical skills, but even without advanced maths, I was able to run statistical analyses on my data and draw conclusions.

A shared challenge: statistics and research

How hard was the statistics module in this course?

Psychology 5/10

basic statistics in SPSS

Neuroscience 8/10

more complex experimental designs lead to the demand for advanced statistical analyses

Psychology explores the human brain and behaviour via observation or questionnaires, whereas neuroscience focuses on measuring specific variables using more advanced techniques and providing different type of data (eye movements response, brain waves, brain activity).

Experiment design in psychology and neuroscience:

Conceptualize
Structure
Run the experiment
Analyse data
Interpret collected data
Suggest implementations

In the statistical research methods module, you work with large data sets, which you have to understand before getting into running analysis.

SPSS is widely used in psychology, while in neuroscience you may still need SPSS skills, but you are expected to know Matlab, which gives neuroscience 8 out of 10 on the difficulty scale.

Thank you for reading this blog post and we hope you found it useful!

Do you think neuroscience is harder than psychology? What was the biggest challenge for you on your course?

Let us know in the comments section below!

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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!

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