Research Fellow (Fixed-term)
Reference: SCI1168
Closing Date: Friday, 10th August 2012
Job Type: Research & Teaching
Department: School of Psychology
Salary: £27578 to £32901 per annum, depending on skills and experience

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.
 
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.
 
Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr. Marios Philiastides at [log in to unmask]  Please note that applications sent directly to this email address will not be accepted. For more details on our research interests visithttp://mphiliastides.org.
 
Apply here:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/jobs/currentvacancies/ref/SCI1168