Which Path for Neuroscience: Med School or Medical Physics?

[fizikx]

Med school or Medical physics??

Hey all, I have an interest in neuroscience, and I was wondering if it would be better to go to med school, or go to graduate school for medical physics. I was also wondering which areas of physics are more hands on. Thank you in advance, fizikx.

 

[berkeman]

Wow, great stuff. What areas of neuroscience interest you most? What is your background so far? Depending on what areas of neuroscience you want to get into, I'd think that an undergraduate degree either in EE or ChemE or Physics would be a good start. In the fields you are interested in, what graduate and post-graduate degrees are found the most?

 

[madness]

I'm interested in neuroscience as well. I'm currently doing a masters in mathematical physics. Could I convert this degree to some kind of neuroscience PhD. For example using quantum physics, condensed matter physics or even just maths skills.

 

[arunma]

Fizikx, I once did some work in a medical physics department (it was part of a clinic). I would say that if you're interested in neuroscience, med school might be the better plan. Medical physics has a bit more to do with the instrumentation side of things, such as design, maintainence, and improvement of imaging technologies. If neuroscience itself is what interests you, then I don't think the physics route is what would interest you.

 

[fizikx]

Wow, great stuff. What areas of neuroscience interest you most? What is your background so far? Depending on what areas of neuroscience you want to get into, I'd think that an undergraduate degree either in EE or ChemE or Physics would be a good start. In the fields you are interested in, what graduate and post-graduate degrees are found the most?

more or less I'm interested in how the mind works.. I'm majoring in physics, entering my third year this september

 

[imabug]

What aspect of neuroscience interests you most: biological or physical? If you're interested in the biological side of neuroscience (diseases, clinical function, treatment, diagnosis, biology, pathology, etc) then an MD or MD/PhD would be the better route.

If you're more interested in physical aspects (signal transduction, modeling, measurement, imaging, signal processing, instrumentation, etc) then biophysics, bioengineering or medical physics specializing in MRI/functional MRI would probably be the route for you.

 

[scorpa]

Have you considered just entering into a neuroscience undergraduate degree program?

 

[vegetto34]

I say, do both bio-medical engineering PhD and medicine. It's worthwhile since both are related and heavily converge, and allows a lot of flexibility career-wise as well.