Speaking of neuroscience...

Sometime in April 2011, I stood against the wall in a packed Loyola Campus hallway, waiting to write my last exam in undergraduate psychology. My friend stood next to me, muttering GPA arithmetic to herself, wondering if she had scored enough As in her last term to secure a place in the graduate clinical program at Concordia. To my knowledge, she had a stellar GPA, but then so did everyone seeking a career in clinical psychology.

The Department of Psychology at Concordia admits only 12 new clinical graduate candidates a year out of nearly 240 applicants, according to a departmental survey.

Despite those odds, many psychology students prefer to place their career eggs in the clinical psychology basket.

The desire to help others is what drives many undergraduates to pursue clinical studies. Yet, given the limited number of spaces in the program, not every student with a clinical dream will realize that goal, and many will have to consider alternatives.

In contrast, I’ve observed that only a handful of psychology majors appear interested in a career in research. The word research seems to carry heavy baggage in the mind of the average undergraduate. According to the course material, our primary goal as students is to critique research. Methods, conclusions, statistics, figures – sometimes entire published articles – are stripped and analyzed on a regular basis. Although the practice hones a necessary skill set, it fails to make research inherently attractive to the average student.

My experiences during the last year of my honours psychology program helped me clarify my goal to take up a career in research. Sometime during those months of seminars and reading scientific papers in brain research, I realized that neuroscience was the discipline I wanted to pursue.

The relationship between the physical brain and psychology appeared inherently fascinating, and seemed to offer some of the deepest probes into understanding human behaviour.

In my seminar courses, my peers talked about advances in Brain-Computer Interface technology (or BCI) and brain stimulation techniques. They even showed videos of remote-controlled rats as part of recent studies in optogenetics, which is a new field of research involving the real-time control of cellular activity with the power of light.

Here at last, in the final year of the program, we were allowed to scour papers for ourselves, analyze our own data, and share findings from some of the most innovative research in psychology today.

Once I had taken a leap forward into considering a future in research, I decided to share my enthusiasm with a much younger demographic. In November 2012, I flew home to give a TEDx talk at TEDxYouth@Winchester, Dubai, titled “What if we could control the brain.” The talk is now available on the official website.

As part of a speaker series titled The Power of Ideas, I used the opportunity to share some of the most radical findings in brain stimulation techniques with an audience composed of young adults. Suffice to say, my audience was left awestruck, and eager to learn more about these new frontiers of research.

Research in neuroscience currently plays an increasing role in moulding our knowledge of psychology. In a general sense, neuroscience and clinical psychology are not mutually exclusive fields. Both avenues share a common goal of improving our welfare, and are even more influential when combined.

Maybe it’s time we shared that message with undergraduates.

Related link:
•   Concordia's Department of Psychology