The good news for me is that cognitive neuroscience doesn't face those pressures (yet). Most of the students doing cogNeuro and even computational neuroscience are from the US and Canada. In general, I got the impression that competition between students in these programs is much less important than collaboration.

That said, your point is very well taken: cutting edge research will still be very competitive. And, since the stuff I want to do comes very close to bio-medical engineering, I might face more of these sorts of competitive pressures than most people in my field.