That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-How to Become a Neuroscientist

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss how to become a neuroscientist. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kergolsen and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another neuroscience bite. Well, this is an answer to a question. Remember, if you have questions or ideas for episodes, you can follow me on Twitter at that neuroscience guy and just DM me, or you can send us an email at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. And the question was simple. Well, how do I become a neuroscientist? Well, basically, you spend a lot of time in school. You know, most high school curriculums, and I don't know about the entire world, of course, but in North America, we don't really touch on neuroscience that much. My son, I know when he was doing middle school, had some units on the brain and how the brain works, which of course would be

neuroscience, but there wasn't a ton. I think he spent a whole three weeks on it. And I have a friend who teaches high school here in Victoria, and he teaches a psychology class in grade 12, who teaches high school here in Victoria, and he teaches a psychology class in grade 12, where they do discuss neuroscience. Just to be clear, psychology and neuroscience, at least cognitive neuroscience, are very similar. I think the principal difference is that in psychology, for instance, you might talk about memory and how memory works.

Neuroscience, you're just adding in the hardware, which parts of the brain are involved in memory and how does works. Neuroscience, you're just adding in the hardware, which parts of the brain are involved in memory and how does that work? So they can be quite similar and they overlap quite a bit. And to be fair, this is true on the lower end. If you got into cellular level neuroscience, like how neurons function, there's a lot of overlap with biology or at least some parts of biology. So how do you become a neuroscientist? Well, in North America, some universities have undergraduate degrees in neuroscience. I used to be a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and we did have an undergraduate

program in neuroscience, but we don't have one at the University of Victoria, for instance. You would take psychology would be the closest thing and maybe a couple of the courses would be called neuroscience. Neuroscience usually happens at the graduate level. So when you do your master's degree or your PhD, it's quite common to have a program in neuroscience. So it's kind of a short and simple bite, but how do you become a neuroscientist? You basically go to university, you take an undergraduate degree, probably psychology or biology, depending on whether you're cellular or a higher systems level like cognitive neuroscience. And then you would specialize in graduate school. You'd get a master's degree and then potentially a PhD.

So there you are. It's a simple answer to a question. How do you become a neuroscientist? You spend way too much time in school. Now, of course, you can also learn a lot on your own. There's tons of books out there. You know, there's YouTube videos. There's even this podcast. So there are other things you can do to learn about neuroscience, but to become one, you got to go to school. Anyway, remember, if you've got ideas, you can send them to me on Twitter or Gmail. Like I said at the outset, you can support us

through Patreon, of course, and there's always the podcast itself. Please subscribe. It helps a ton. My name is Olof Kergolsen, and that's a neuroscience bite on how to become a neuroscientist. I'll see you soon for another episode of the podcast.