Maastricht University, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience

Master Psychology: Neuropsychology

You’ll study normal and deviant behaviour in relation to brain structure and function.

Learn about congenital, acquired or degenerative brain dysfunctions; related neuropsychiatric disorders; and neuropharmacological mechanisms that underlie behaviour.

If you choose to specialise in Neuropsychology, you'll study normal and deviant behaviour in relation to brain structure and function. You'll particularly focus on congenital, acquired and degenerative brain dysfunctions, and their related neuropsychiatric disorders. The neuropharmacological mechanisms that underlie behaviour in health and disease will also be highlighted in the programme. By combining in-depth courses that provide theoretical knowledge with courses on advanced methodological and diagnostic skills, you'll obtain all the training you need to pursue a clinical or scientific career in this highly challenging domain.

Programme Outline

The programme has four compulsory courses that cover the basic neurobiological and cognitive affective mechanisms underlying the behaviour of healthy subjects and patients with neurological or psychiatric diseases:

• Brain Functioning: focuses on understanding how the brain is organised to support cognitive functions, including the paradigms and neuroimaging methods we use to study this
• Neurobehavioural functioning: covers normal and abnormal life span development of (neuro)behavioural functions.
• Optimising brain and behaviour: addresses the way the brain continuously changes in terms of function and structure (i.e., plasticity).
• Methods of assessment: focuses on the different approaches to measure brain-behaviour relationships, including their psychometric properties.

In addition to the core courses, you'll also get practical training focused on neuropsychological diagnostic skills, and you'll be familiarised with psychological research methods. You'll receive training in designing and applying diagnostic and experimental instruments as well as in assessment procedures for analysing, interpreting and reporting on the data (obtained, for example, from simulated patients or experiments). During the second semester, you'll complete a research internship or a research and clinical internship and write your master's thesis.

Linking up with Ongoing Research

The themes of the Neuropsychology specialisation are closely linked to the research of our staff.

They include:

• Cognitive-behavioural dysfunction: looking at the assessment and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders such as attention deficits, functional deficits, neurotrauma, schizophrenia and dementia.
• Cognitive-behavioural effects of drugs and related psychoactive substances: examining the effects of drugs of abuse on brain toxicity and cognitive impairment; the effects of various nutrients and foods on brain neurotransmission and cognitive-affective behaviour such as depression and stress; the effects of drugs and medicines on driving performance; and the effects of medicines on improving cognitive performance.
• Neurodegenerative or age-related cognitive affective changes: exploring cognitive ageing, testing models of neurodegenerative diseases and markers for neurocognitive dysfunction.
• Genes, stress and behaviour: investigating genetic brain vulnerability for stress and stress-related cognitive-affective disorders.

This close link between education and research offers you many opportunities to participate in ongoing research. You will also have access to various instruments to measure behaviour (observational environments, questionnaires and neuropsychological tests) as well as brain imaging techniques (EEG/ERP and fMRI). This provides you with the opportunity to develop both clinically and scientifically relevant skills.

Problem-Based Learning

As with many Maastricht University programmes, the Developmental Psychology programme is taught using Problem-Based Learning (PBL). In small tutorial groups of 10 to 12 students, you'll seek solutions to ‘problems’ taken from real-world situations. Instructors act as facilitators, giving help as it’s needed. This allows you to build independence and develop problem-solving skills that you’ll need in the field. This active, dynamic and collaborative learning method has one of the highest knowledge retention rates of any instructional method.

International classroom

From day one of the programme, you’ll be challenged with differing viewpoints and experiences as you interact with staff and students from all over the world. Your worldview will be enhanced by this interaction, bringing you closer to the programme’s goal of teaching students not only facts and concepts but also international accessibility and understanding. Roughly 80% of the students in this master’s programme come from outside the Netherlands. Such diversity creates an international atmosphere that is strengthened by the international orientation of the programme.