[visionlist] Postdoctoral position in value-based decision making

[Marios Philiastides]

*University of Nottingham*-School of Psychology

*£27,578 - £32,901 per annum, depending on skills and experience.*

Applications are invited for the above post to work on a project funded by
the BBSRC entitled *"*Spatiotemporal characterization of value judgments
and reward processing in the human brain*"*. The post will be based at the
School of Psychology, which benefits from on-site access to an excellent
research infrastructure, which includes several MRI scanners (including a
7T high field scanner), EEG, MEG, TMS, behavioural and eye-tracking labs.
In addition the School interacts closely with other departments including
Physics, Biological Sciences, Computer Science and Mathematics, the Sir
Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre, the Horizon Digital Economy
Research Institute and the Centre for Decision Research and Experimental
Economics.

The project aims to infer the spatiotemporal dynamics of the cortical
networks involved in value and preference-based judgments as well as reward
prediction error processing during reinforcement guided decision making
using state of the art neuroimaging. The post-holder will be responsible
for contributing to the conception and implementation of the necessary
experimental paradigms, recruiting and training participants, setting up
and troubleshooting the data collection equipment, acquiring and analysing
simultaneous EEG and fMRI data. Data analysis requires making use of
algorithms already developed in our lab using Matlab (and where necessary
extending these algorithms) to pre-process and denoise the EEG signals from
MR-related artefacts, to extract meaningful single-trial
electrophysiological signatures from the EEG, and to use these signatures
to drive the analysis of the fMRI data using either fSL or SPM software.
The ultimate goal of the project would be to exploit trial-to-trial
variability in electrophysiologically-derived measures that can be used in
conjunction with simultaneously acquired fMRI to tease apart the cascade of
constituent cortical processes involved in value- and reward-based decision
making in humans.

Candidates must have a PhD (or equivalent) in neuroscience, psychology,
cognitive science or in a related discipline. Candidates must have previous
practical experience and working knowledge of human neuroimaging (including
both EEG and fMRI) as evident by a strong track record of publications in
international journals. The post holder must also have working knowledge of
multivariate data analysis techniques, excellent programming skills in
Matlab and previous experience in using either fSL or SPM analysis
software. Previous experience in neurocognition of decision making,
simultaneous EEG/fMRI experiments, machine learning and computational
neural modeling is desirable.

This post will be available from 1st October 2012 or as soon as possible
thereafter for three years. Interviews are expected to take place in late
August 2012.

Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr. Marios Philiastides at
marios.philiastides at nottingham.ac.uk.  Please note that applications sent
directly to this email address will not be accepted. For more details on
our research interests visit http://mphiliastides.org.
For more details and/or to apply on-line please access:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/Jobs/CurrentVacancies/ref/SCI1168.   If you are
unable to apply on-line please contact the Human Resources Department, tel:
0115 951 5206.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://visionscience.com/pipermail/visionlist/attachments/20120814/320c1215/attachment.htm>