Ramachandran obtained a Ph.D. from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. Later he moved to the US, where he spent two years at Caltech as a research fellow working with Jack Pettigrew before being appointed Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego in 1983. He became a full professor there in 1998. He currently holds the rank of Distinguished Professor in the UCSD Psychology Department, and is the Director of its Center for Brain and Cognition, where he works with graduate students and researchers from UCSD and elsewhere on emerging theories in neuroscience. As of July 2019, Ramachandran is also a professor in the UCSD Medical School's Neurosciences program. and an Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.