Psychology PhD Durham University

This course provides a world-class research environment for postgraduate students in Biological, Cognitive, Social or Developmental Psychology along with more applied aspects such as Educational Psychology, Forensic/Criminological Psychology, Neuroscience (including Neurorehabilitation) and Health Psychology. Much of our research is interdisciplinary both within the department and outside of the department. You will be asked to submit an outline research proposal. It is strongly advised that you approach a potential supervisor before completing this, in order to ensure that they are willing and able to supervise your studies, and that your proposed research is a suitable fit with their research interests. Research students normally have both a primary and additional research supervisor, and two primary co-supervisors, as their supervisory team. We offer a high level of support to our research postgraduates and students are expected to meet with their supervisors at least once per fortnight, and the regularity of meetings is monitored by the Director of Research Students as well as your progression tutor (a departmental academic who is not a supervisor). This course includes three year period in which the first year will be used to develop a research paradigm followed by two years of experimentation. Examined by thesis (traditional or published papers) and viva voce. We use a variety of techniques to answer our questions relating to adult and infant brains including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), electroencephalography (EEG), eye movement tracking, biophysiological recording as well as the analysis of visuomotor action and psychophysical performance. Our research involves patients with different neurodevelopmental (e.g. ADHD, autism, developmental dyslexia, Williams Syndrome), neurological (e.g. patients with brain lesions, split brain patients) and psychiatric disorders (e.g. bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) as well as healthy participants of all ages, ranging from infants to late adulthood.