[visionlist] Open PhD position: vision science/cognitive neuroscience.

[Jan Brascamp]

Open PhD position: vision science/cognitive neuroscience.

We invite applications for a fully funded 3-year PhD-project on experience dependence in attention allocation and conscious vision. The project will be jointly supervised by Árni Kristjánsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland) and Jan Brascamp (Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands).

Our brain's processing of current visual input depends on experiences with visual input that occurred in the past. Such experience dependence is demonstrated by many psychophysical and neuronal phenomena such as forms of priming and adaptation. This PhD project will focus on two such phenomena, namely priming of visual search and perceptual memory for ambiguous images. Priming of visual search is a well-documented paradigm that offers insights into the role of experience in attention allocation, whereas perceptual memory for ambiguous images is important for understanding experience dependence in subjective visual perception. Although research into these two paradigms has hitherto developed independently, recent work suggests that the two have an overlapping neural basis and that their joint study will provide new angles on understanding both kinds of experience dependence. This project will focus on such joint study.

The successful candidate will carry out behavioral/psychophysical, eye tracking, and fMRI experiments on human observers. He or she is expected to have a Master's degree in psychology, neuroscience, or a related field, a strong interest in visual perception, good computer programming skills and preferably research experience in a relevant discipline. The project will start in the summer of 2013, and will take place partly at the University of Iceland and partly at Utrecht University. Salary is according to standard Icelandic regulations, and the funding includes travel costs between both sites.



Interested candidates are invited to send a motivation letter, a detailed CV, contact information of two individuals who can provide references, and a list of grades to Jan Brascamp at j.w.brascamp at gmail.com before April 1st 2013.
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