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The aim of this module is to introduce students to the study of the human brain and to develop an understanding of the way in which ideas about how the brain functions are formulated and how such ideas are tested. Students will be introduced to key conceptual issues, methodological approaches and significant findings in human neuroscience, their historical background, and the types of empirical evidence on which these findings are based. Students will be encouraged to think critically about the evidence for popular ideas about the human brain e.g. we only use 10% of our brains, people are either left brained or right brained, intelligence is linked to increased brain size. Students will be asked to think about what the evidence is for some of the theories and claims about the human brain and to learn how to evaluate conflicting pieces of evidence. Students will have to think about why some these ideas have become popular and well known and to develop experimental studies that could test some of these ideas. Students will be introduced to the topics of sample bias in research, specifically the fact the most studies recruit from a non-representative sample of the population. Students will be introduced to ethical considerations in human neuroscience research not just in the research domain but also when applied to related business enterprises. The content in this module will be linked to the Human Neuroscience weekly seminar series that runs throughout the three-year programme and the seminars will allow the students to develop relevant academic writing skills as well as an opportunity for formative assessments.

The content will be delivered through in person lectures and group discussions. There will be three one hour timetabled sessions a week. After the second lecture of the week students will be set a short piece of homework that relates to the delivered content and this will be discussed in group discussions as part of the final lecture session of the week.

The aims of the module:

• To learn how to evaluate evidence for claims made about the human brain
• To learn how to identify where further research is required to support a particular idea
• To learn about how to design experiments to test new ideas.
• To provide a historical perspective to the relatively new field of human neuroscience
• To understand the inherent limitations and difficulties in studying the human brain
• To learn how to read and evaluate original research articles

Learning outcomes:

• To understand the inherent limitations and difficulties in studying the human brain.
• To read and evaluate original research articles.
• To explain why some ideas are regularly reported in the popular press and social media and critically evaluate the evidence for them.
• To understand the scientific cycle of (i) designing an experiment to test an idea (ii) evaluating the evidence for the idea based on the data (iii) and designing new experiments based on results of the first experiment.