Courses available
The options generally available for visiting students are the second year (Part A) courses taken by all Oxford students. Students at Oxford will have had taken a first year course in Statistics and an Introductory Psychology course, which covers Developmental, Social, Perception, Psychobiology and Cognitive Psychology. If you do not have background courses in Psychology, you may need to take these first year papers in advance of the second year option, or to take the option as an adapted major. Student with the requisite background can take second year courses as a major or a minor.
First year course components of the Introduction to Psychology may be taken as minors.
Advanced options, for third year (Part B) students, relate closely to research carried out in the department of Experimental Psychology. Tutorials in these areas might be available but cannot be guaranteed. Please feel free to add areas of interest beyond the core option, but please note that any options related to clinical psychology are routinely over-subscribed and unlikely to be available. Third year options generally pre-suppose some background from the Oxford second year course.
Course list
Second year courses (as a major or a minor)
- Cognition
- Behavioural Neuroscience
- Developmental Science
- Individual Differences and Clinical Psychology
- Perception
- Social Psychology
First year courses (take one component as a minor, or both in a term as a major)
- Introduction to Psychology: Social Psychology
- Introduction to Psychology: Perception
- Introduction to Psychology: Psychobiology
- Introduction to Psychology: Developmental Psychology
- Introduction to Psychology: Cognitive Psychology
Statistics for Psychology (as a major only)
This is a first statistics course which may be taken as a major in any term, although the lectures run across Michaelmas & Hilary terms, and also in weeks 1-3 of Trinity term.
Third year options
Specialist courses from the third year of the Oxford degree may be possible, if the relevant pre-requisite courses have been taken.
Specialist topics for LMH visiting students
AI Unfolded: From Chatbots to General Minds
(Connecting familiar AI systems to the broader ideas of Artificial General Intelligence.)
Overview
This course introduces students to the world of Artificial Intelligence, linking everyday AI applications such as chatbots to deeper questions about how machines can think, learn, and reason. It provides a gentle, conceptual introduction with minimal mathematics, making it suitable for students from psychology, neuroscience, and related fields. This course will discuss and explore the work done in different research group at Oxford.
Topics Covered
Neuroscience foundations for modelling – How the brain inspires artificial neural networks and learning models.
A brief history of AI – From early symbolic AI to today’s deep learning revolution.
How large language models (LLMs) work – Understanding the principles behind systems like ChatGPT.
Limitations of LLMs – What they can and cannot do, and why.
Key Oxford contributions to AI and neuroscience – The Oxford Foundation for Theoretical Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence led by Dr. Simon Stringer – The Human Information Processing (HIP) Lab in the Department of Experimental Psychology, directed by Professor Christopher Summerfield.
Alternative AI approaches – Including work by Yann LeCun and others on self-supervised and embodied learning.
Philosophy of AI – Can machines truly think? Exploring consciousness, intelligence, and ethics in AI.
Advice on submitted written work
Please submit 2 recent essays or test papers relevant to the topics you are interested in pursuing at LMH.
Tutors and Lecturers
Prof Jill O'Reilly is a psychologist with a particular interest in computational neuroscience.