neuroscience/neurobio/experimental psych....what the heck!?

[solar3000]

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here it goes. If anyone has asked this before, I apologize for the repeated thread.

I am having a hard time understanding the differences between:

neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurobiology, experiemental psych.

first, to get a neuroscience deg, do you have to get it thru med school and get an MD or thru grad school and get a Phd? can someone help me clearify this?



second, I feel I am becoming more interested in psychology but from a biological prospective. I am very interested in learning about the biology of the brain, chemicals affecting behavior, etc. and I am loosing interst in doing clinical research that does not involve a lot of biology in it. makes sense?

now, I wonder what the requirements would be for someone who wants to go into "neurosciencebiologypsychologyexperimental psychology".....ok sorry for the confusion, how about just a neuroscience degree?

I have a BA psychology deg and for anyone who has one of these degrees knows that we don't get exposed to hard science, meaning..the only hard science courses i took would be basic bio, a few neuropsychology courses, but i never took: chemistry, advanced biology courses or went beyond college algebra.

what would I need to do in order to get a chance to be accepted into a neuroscience program? Do I even have a chance???

 

[cara susanna]

There are others here who can better answer your question, but I can tell you that neuroscience is PhD. The MD route is referred to as neurology, to the best of my knowledge. Neuroscience is sort of multi-discipline AFAIK.

And I think that the important thing would be to have neuroscience-related research experience. If you have a lot of that, I think it would make up for the lack of "hard science" coursework.

Again, my statements may be contradicted by someone more knowledgeable later. 😀

 

[erg923]

I am only going to answer a few parts of your zillion part question: 🙂

"Experimental psychology" is the umbrella term for the branches of psychology that are, for lack of a better word, experimental in nature. They are not directly applied to clinical problems by the researcher. Some of the experimental branches of psychology one can specialize in are developmental, social, cognitive, animal learning, and neuroscience. A degree in neuroscience is a research degree (ie., a Ph.d degree) not an M.D degree, which is a practioner degree in general medicine. Experimental psychologists will not be practitioners (you will not see patients in a clnical context) and will not attempt to apply their resesrch in clinical settings themselves. They are not trained in psychometric assessment, therapy, or any of the skills associated with a clinical psychologist who see patients. Almost all the different psychology branches are seeking to apply their theory or work to a larger framework so it can inform our understanding of human processes/problems/diseases. However, experimental psychology often (but not always) focuses more on understanding basic underlying processes in normal behavior. Understanding this, others can then further hypothesize what causes these processes to become abnormal. For example, researching the hypothalamus in rats isn't applied directly to any specific human problem, but in concert with other resesrch, it helps us to better understand the basics of functional neuroanatomy. Knowledge about functional neuroanatomy then helps inform the field of clinical neuroscience. Clinical neuroscience then implements and directly applies this acknowledge towards better understanding various neurologic and psychiatric diseases.

"Clinical Psychology" seeks to use psychological knowledge/insights (i.e., the hard science of psychology) and directly apply them towards various human problems. For example, the schools of psychotherapy within clincial psych are directly bore out of principles of learning and behavior change that have been gathered by both individuals doing experimental as well as applied work. Clinical psych also has specialties embeded within it. These are child clincial psychology, clinical forensic psychology, health psychology, and of course, clinical neuropsychology. Neuropsychology has its historical roots in the experimental realm of psychology, specifically cognitive psychology. However, when most people speak of "neuropsychology" the are speaking of the practice of neuropsychology (i.e., clincial neuropsychology). Clincial neuropsychologists are trained as clinical psychologists in clincial psychology doctoral programs with specialized tracks, or concentrations in "clincial neuropsychology." Usually this consists of several additional classes in neuroantomy, neuroscience, and neurology, as well as advanced courses in psychometric assessment and differential diagnosis. After your Ph.D. you need to do a two year post-doc fellowship in clinical neuropsychology. This requires seeing literally hundreds of patients during this period, mostly doing psychometric assessment for diagnosis. Head injuries, dementias, memory complaints, etc. are the most common types of patients you will be seeing. Although some programs will expose students to some therapy cases or cog rehab type therpay stuff. But mostly, the focus is on diagnostic assessment and report writing. The neuroscientists and experimental folks are not able to practice neuropsychology because they are not formally trained in how to interact with patients or to recognize, assess, or diagnose psychiatric/psychological illness. A large part of the job of a clincial neuropsychologist is teasing apart what problems are representative of organic brain dysfunction/injury, and what problems are really do to psychiatric/psychological issues. This requires extensive knowledge of diagnosis and assessment of personality and psychiatric issues, not just assessment of cognitive issues.

Programs in neuroscience are often just as competitive as programs in clinical psychology. You need good neuroscience-related resesrch experience (a couple years of it), good letters, GPA above 3.5, GRE V+Q over 1200.

 

[sicologia]

what would I need to do in order to get a chance to be accepted into a neuroscience program? Do I even have a chance???

I think erg923 said it best. In fact, I don't think I've seen it said any better. If it's a neuroscience program you would like to enter, you may want to brush up with a few courses from Neuroanatomy, Biology, and the hard sciences required for a strictly neuroscience program.

On the other hand, if you truly want to enter a career in neuropsych, you would need to go for a doctorate in Psychology.

Neurology takes you down the medical school route.

Finally, I do believe you've made a great choice to explore the field. The growth in all of these fields is tremendous (yet, competitve). Good luck!

 

[myelin]

here it goes. If anyone has asked this before, I apologize for the repeated thread.

I am having a hard time understanding the differences between:

neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurobiology, experiemental psych.

first, to get a neuroscience deg, do you have to get it thru med school and get an MD or thru grad school and get a Phd? can someone help me clearify this?



second, I feel I am becoming more interested in psychology but from a biological prospective. I am very interested in learning about the biology of the brain, chemicals affecting behavior, etc. and I am loosing interst in doing clinical research that does not involve a lot of biology in it. makes sense?

now, I wonder what the requirements would be for someone who wants to go into "neurosciencebiologypsychologyexperimental psychology".....ok sorry for the confusion, how about just a neuroscience degree?

I have a BA psychology deg and for anyone who has one of these degrees knows that we don't get exposed to hard science, meaning..the only hard science courses i took would be basic bio, a few neuropsychology courses, but i never took: chemistry, advanced biology courses or went beyond college algebra.

what would I need to do in order to get a chance to be accepted into a neuroscience program? Do I even have a chance???

There is a lot of overlap among these fields so it is common to be confused as to where the lines are drawn, where neuroscience ends and neuropsychology begins and so on. Many NP/NS programs overlap and their students take courses in both NP and NS.

Generally, neuroscience exists at the cellular and molecular level. They use microscopes, slides, and test tubes. Neuropsychology examines brain-behavior relationships as well as overt behavior and uses measurement techniques often outside of the brain (EEG, imaging, neuropsychological testing). Both degrees are obtained from graduate school, not medical school (MD). In general, neuroscience degrees are obtained from neuroscience PhD programs while neuropsychology degrees are obtained from clinical psychology PhD programs.

To obtain a degreen in neuroscience, you will definately need to take hard science courses such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Many require mathematics courses such as calc as well. You will also likely need lab research experience aside from that obtained from course lab requirements.

Edit: I had similar troubles trying to figure out which discipline I wanted to pursue. It helped to ask myself if I wanted to work with people or not and in what setting I'd like to work in. For example, I wanted to have the option to conduct research or see clients in a hospital setting, so I went with clinical neuropsychology. However, if I didn't want to see clients, be in a lab setting, and conduct research, I would have gone with neuroscience. But I am sure there are deviations from my logic YMMV.

 

[Didymus89]

So clinical neuropsychology allows you to treat patients, even in a hospital setting? If it's true that neuroscience is more research based but clinical neuropsychology can do a bit of both, than you really helped me! Thanks!

What kind of volunteer work can I do as an undergraduate that will help me get into a good program? I'm at the University of the Pacific and we don't have a strong neuroscience base in our psychology program.

 

[erg923]

Clinical neuropsychology is simply a subfield of (a specialization within) clinical psychology. Thus, you need to obtain all the experiences necessary to be competitive for admission to a clinical psychology doctoral program--

GPA 3.5 and above, GRE V+Q=1200 or better, and research experience. Research experience is key! For now, any kind of research experience will do, it doesn't have to be within npsych or neuroscience, although it wouldn;t hurt either. As you get some basic research experience under your belt, you can become more picky and proactively seek more neuroscience-related research. Clinical volunteer experiences in clinical setting (i.e., mental health tech in a psych hospital/ unit, or crisis hotline) is helpful, but is given much less weight than the above mentioned criteria.

If your goal continues to be clinical neuropsychology as you are nearing you last year of undergrad, then you can start researching programs with neuropsychology tracks/concentrations within their clinical psych doctoral program.

PS: Yes, clinical neuropsychologists treat patients, as they are trained as therapy. You may get some specialty training in cognitive rehabilitation therapy as well, depending on your training opportunities. HOWEVER, you need to realize that psychometric assessment lies at the heart of clinical neuropsychology, and many npsychs ONLY do assessments and write reports. That is, they make recommendations in their reports and refer out to someone else for treatment(s). You dont have to be one of those people, but if you plan on getting into neuropsychology, you should be prepared to spend many hours during your training administering tests, scoring them, and sitting in front of computer writing reports and conceptualizing data. If you are not truly fascinated by brain-behavior relationships, the pure assessment portion of neuropsychology can get get quite boring.

 

[AlaskanJustin]

This is funny reading the explanations of these things... I think it was erg that said a decent explanation of them, but I would just correct the neuroscience bit.

Neuroscience is a broad, and I mean broad umbrella term (sometimes used synonymously with neurobiology) for several fields of research pertaining to the CNS and PNS. Funny enough, neuroscience can in fact include several fields of study including but not restricted to: cognitive, behavioral, systems, tranlsational, molecular and cellular, neuroanatomy, electrophysiology, neurochemistry, and so on. Most neuroscience programs are becoming more and more interdisciplinary by nature, particular ones that have translational neuroscience programs.

Some psychology programs have cognitive and/or behavioral neuroscience programs housed within the department (i.e., U Washington) that have tight relationships with other departments. BUT for the most part a neuroscience PhD is housed in the Biology department.

If you are interested in bran behavior relationships in HUMANS, thennnnn cognitive neuroscience is a nice route, especially those programs that are either housed in psychology departments OR are interdisciplinary (i.e., Biology, Psychology, Philosophy etc like UCSD's program). IF you are more into working with animals behavioral neuroscience would be the route to go.

Clinical neuropsych as others very nicely summed up is clinical by nature, involves patient interaction, etc etc, but still for the most part is research (or combination research/clinical practice) by nature.

Um as far as what you need? Some post-bacc experience at this point... NIH would probably be a good place 🙂 do a post-bacc IRTA fellowship to get some good solid research experience, take a couple of the courses and have them paid by your PI, get the GPA etc.

For some neuroscience programs you need the Biology subject GRE, HOWEVER because so many programs are now interdisciplinary, they take students that only have the GRE. You will need Biology, but I would say you would need that for any neuro-related program, but for the most part you will take things like intro to neuroscience etc for ANY neuro-related program you get into.

For an idea of the curriculum, just go to any neuroscience program site, even if its housed in Biology, they still make you take a course load similar to a psych course load, they are nothing like the UK based programs (no course load only research).

I have been through this stuff too and advised students and post-bacc IRTAs for a little bit now so I could throw you any advice I might have learned.

J

 

[cure67]

How many years does it take to become a neuropsychologist? What all do they deal with? What's the most rewarding thing about the career? Any dislikes or likes about it? Are there any programs in Pennsylvania or surrounding states for Neuropsychology? Where do they work and what type of disorders do they deal with? Anything else you could tell me about this career would be appreciated.

 

[erg923]

Search for programs here. http://www.div40.org/training/index.html

Related thread here:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=552468&highlight=neuropsychology

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=726455&highlight=neuropsychology

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=709152&highlight=neuropsychology

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=680860&highlight=neuropsychology

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

MOD NOTE: I merged your thread with an existing thread about neuropsychology. -t4c

 

[ClinPsycMasters]

How many years does it take to become a neuropsychologist? What all do they deal with? What's the most rewarding thing about the career? Any dislikes or likes about it? Are there any programs in Pennsylvania or surrounding states for Neuropsychology? Where do they work and what type of disorders do they deal with? Anything else you could tell me about this career would be appreciated.

Hmmm, you're a "post-doc" and you don't know? 🙂

Don't go into neuropsych! Dante talks about NP assessment in his famous poem, Inferno. Whether you're the one giving an eight-hour-test or the poor fella with TBI having to answer one question after another...after another...for insurance purposes, it can feel like torture! I so hope that we come up with a better way (be it shorter tests or new imaging technologies) to assess cognitive function.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

However....that person still NEEDS the assessment for insurance purposes, the field can be a nice niche, and once you get far enough along in your training you'll have other people to give the assessments for you. It isn't for everyone, as there is a good bit more training to do it, and it can be A LOT of writing. Definitely keep reading and try and talk to people in the field.