NST Part II Physiology, Development and Neuroscience

Part II Administrator: Sophie Jones

Email part2@pdn.cam.ac.uk

The Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience is concerned with material central to the life sciences. It asks and answers questions about the way that cells, tissues and organs develop and function in people and animals. Physiology, Development and Neuroscience are broad but interlinked subjects with many different areas of specialisation. A good grounding in these subjects opens the way to a wide variety of careers: these range from those where you use your knowledge directly, to those in which the understanding you will acquire for how complex organisms develop and function can be put to work in managing many types of equally complex human organisations. The knowledge and skills gained on this Part II course will also provide a valuable basis for the practice of human and veterinary clinical medicine, where a critical understanding of scientific advances are essential in designing and evaluating new treatments. Many parts of the course concentrate particularly on the important areas where recent discoveries have changed our perception of disease and have posed new questions to be answered. The modules are organised into three themes, allowing you to spend the whole of your third year studying in depth Development & Reproductive Biology, Integrative Physiology or Neuroscience.

Those teaching in the course include most members of staff of the Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience and also invited specialists from across the University, and from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University College London, the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London, and Addenbrooke's and Papworth Hospitals.

You will probably already have an overview of some or all of physiology, development and neuroscience from your Part I courses and we will therefore build upon these basics by offering an in depth course in which we will not attempt to cover the whole of these subjects. We offer teaching on topics of current interest that we discuss to a much higher level than in Part I. This means that you can devote your time to those areas you find particularly interesting. While we expect that the majority will have done the Part IA and IB courses in physiology, neurobiology or developmental and/or reproductive biology, we will also welcome those who have done only one of these courses, as well as those who approach physiology, development and neuroscience from other directions, such as biochemistry, genetics or animal biology.