Course - Thesis in Neuroscience - FY3901
Thesis in Neuroscience
About
About the course
Course content
The thesis must have scientific structure and be founded on a valid theory and adequate use of literature. The student must participate actively in research through his/her work on the project. The supervisor is appointed by agreement. It is the students responsibility to contact possible supervisors for his/her project.
The project is scheduled for 2 semesters, but it is recommended that the student starts planning the thesis early and does some work on it during the entire study period.
The evaluation is based on the thesis and an oral examination where the student presents his/her project (ca 30 min) with discussion. The oral examination is used to adjust the grade of the thesis.
Students enrolled in the master's programme in 2008 or earlier can write the thesis in Norwegian or English. Students enrolled in the master's programme in 2009 or later must write the thesis in English.
Details regulating the work with and assessment of the thesis are given in Guidelines for the Masters Thesis in Neuroscience.
Learning outcome
General learning outcome:
The student has mastered the principles of an independent problem-focused experimental approach in neuroscience and can interpret experimental results in the context of critically appraised published information. The student has the skills and competences for continued scientific learning and education.
Specific learning outcomes:
Knowledge
The student has advanced knowledge of:
- one subfield/discipline of neuroscience
- relevant methodologies and techniques in neuroscience including both historical as well as more recent techniques
- main resources to retrieve scientific information
- general rules of reporting and publishing scientific reports
- guidelines for oral presentation
- best practice in scientific ethical behavior
Skills:
The student is capable of:
- performing a research project independently, but with supervision
- recognizing, formulating and testing an hypothesis/research question
- finding relevant methods and to applying those in order to experimentally address a scientific problem/question/hypothesis
- adequate reporting of applied experimental approaches and obtained experimental results
- adequate analysis of findings, including appropriate levels of statistics and integration with existing (published) information
- retrieving and obtaining relevant published scientific information
- communicating and defending own experimental results and their interpretations both orally and in the format of a master thesis
- summarizing, documenting, reporting, and reflecting on own findings.
General competence:
The student is competent to:
- evaluate ethical principles on animal and human research
- search for relevant data on his/her own scientific question, and critically assess published data within the theoretical framework chosen for a particular project
- carry out research independently and knows how to formulate and express results and interpretations of the research outcomes
- to participate in discussions, put forward his/her results both in a constellation of peers as well as for lay-people
Learning methods and activities
Supervised project according to given guidelines.
All students doing their master's thesis at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology, should conclude an agreement regarding counselling. This is done via the electronic registration system, DAIM. The standard contact period with the supervisor(s) is 50 hours. Any contact between supervisor/s and student beyond this, depends on the supervisor(s) choice of supervision methodology. It is expected that the student works independently beyond the standard contact period.
Recommended previous knowledge
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Required previous knowledge
The student must be admitted to the Master of Science in Neuroscience. In order to be eligible to defend his/her master thesis the student must have passed all exams, i.e. compulsory and elective courses worth 60 credits in total.
Subject areas
- Biophysics
- Physics
- Medicine
- Neuroscience