Doctoral School in Cognitive and Brain Sciences

School's web site

School Coordinator:  prof. David Paul Melcher
Vice-coordinator:  prof. Massimiliano Zampini

Curricula:
1st   Cognitive Neuroscience
2nd  Language, Interaction and Computation

Doctoral Programme:
This educational programme takes advantage of the multi-disciplinary skills of its faculty, of the CIMeC laboratories (Center for Mind/Brain Sciences) and  of the  various departments (Physics, Information and Communication Technology, Cognitive Sciences and Education). The Doctoral course offers an education that allows students to acquire elevated competence in specific areas of fundamental and applied research, encouraging professional development in innovative fields that often require knowledge in different areas. The course also expects an active role on behalf of its students in carrying out seminar-based tasks. Research subjects expected for the current specializations are the following:

Cognitive Neuroscience:
- Number cognition
- Dynamics of complex systems
- Multisensory integration
- Visual memory
- High field MRI-derived measures of brain structure and function
- Eye Movements and Cognition
- Multimodal functional neuroimaging
- Neuroplasticity and recovery of cognitive/linguistic disorders
- Neuropsychology of reading and writing
- Neurosciences and the arts
- Neurosciences and language disorders
- Perception, Attention & Awareness
- Plasticity following sensory deprivation
- Medical decision making
- Word production
- Psychophysics and neural computation
- Inductive and probabilistic reasoning
- Neural representation of concepts, actions and objects

Language, Interaction & Computation:
- Computational lexicography and lexicology
- Embodied communication
- Multimedia intelligent interfaces
- Statistical models of text mining and co-reference resolution
- Theoretical and computational models of semantic interpretation and of the acquisition of semantic and lexical knowledge
- Theoretical linguistics
- User modelling and adaptive systems
All courses will be held in English starting from the first year.

Scientific Areas:
Cognitive Sciences
Experimental Psychology (attention, perception, reasoning, language, memory, sensory processing)
Experimental Physics
Computer Science
Linguistics
Cognitive Neuropsychology
Neuroradiology

Course duration: 3 years