Programme Overview

Our Master's programme offers courses in cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience and neuro-modelling. Taken together these disciplines study how memories, emotions, cognition or consciousness actually work. Students attend lectures in English and practice in leading laboratories of Moscow and of our international partners. Leading scientists supervise students' practical training and writing of Master's thesis during the second year. The programme is carried out in close cooperation with the École Normale Supérieure and Aarhus University.

Cognitive psychology

Modern cognitive psychology is an experimental discipline that studies the origin and functioning of the mind, brain, and intelligence. Our Programme focuses on perception, control of attention and motor responses, formation of mental representations, dynamics of memory retrieval, learning, cognitive development and cognitive breakdown, the mechanisms of reasoning, language, and problem solving.

Cognitive neuroscience

An integration of psychology and neuroscience - Cognitive Neuroscience - examines neural systems underlying complex behaviors like emotions, language, attention, memory, etc.

Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include a wide range of experimental paradigms starting from psychophysics and cognitive psychology, neurology and psychiatry, and ending up with electrophysiological studies of neural systems and, increasingly, cognitive genomics and behavioral genetics. Recent breakthroughs in brain imaging technology allow cognitive neuroscientists to see a live human brain at work using state-of-the-art methods like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magneto- and electroencephalography (MEG, EEG),brain navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS), transcranial direct/alternating current stimulation (tDCS/tACS) .

What are the advantages of our Master’s programme comparing to similar ones?

We are the only English-language Master’s programme in cognitive sciences in Russia. Our lecturers are active world-class scientists including the highly cited researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuroeconomics, neurolinguistics and other interdisciplinary areas. Thanks to our international partners’ laboratories students have an access to the whole range of neuroimaging techniques which provide unique opportunity for the development of young researchers.

What will I study?

The Master’s programme covers a wide range of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience disciplines. Education starts with introductory courses of psychology, mathematics and neuroscience. Cognitive psychology track includes such disciplines as “Visual perception and attention”, “Thinking and emotional modulation of cognition”, and “Memory, learning and cognitive development”. Students are also offered to study cognitive neuroscience disciplines such as “Neuroimaging techniques”, “Behavioral genetics and neurogenetics”, “Computational neuroscience”, and “Neuroeconomics”. In addition, many optional courses are available, for example, “Practical course on non-invasive brain stimulation techniques and electroencephalography” and “Computational modelling”.

Where will I work?

• Research laboratories and international research centers.
• Companies developing projects on optimization and evaluation of user’s interfaces.
• Universities and schools.
• Projects on brain-computer interface development
• Clinical application – pre-surgery brain mapping      

Our research centre

Centre for Cognition & Decision Making

Students have access to the hi-end research methods.