Applications are open for 11 three-year PhD positions in the German Research Council (DFG) funded program “Neurobiology of Social and Emotional Dysfunctions (GRK 2174)”. The program is interdisciplinary and internationally oriented. Details can be found at
https://www.uni-regensburg.de/research/grk-emotion/application/index.html
Two of these projects (C11 & C12) are looking for candidates with a background in (human) neuroimaging and an interest in combining neuroimaging and machine learning. Project C11 is covering clinical neuroscience aspects whereas project C12 is biased towards basic research and computational neuroscience. Interest in clinical neuroscience, brain imaging, and machine learning/statistical methods are essential. Positions are planned to start between May and July, 2023. The positions are funded for up to three years, according to the German pay scale TV-L E13 (65%).
Project C11: “Changes in brain communication and cognition in depressive patients who undergo electroconvulsive therapy”
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a severe mental disorder that is estimated to affect as many as one in five adults during their lifetime. 15-30% of MDD patients have a treatment resistant depression, i.e. they do not show a clinical response to two successive antidepressant (psychological or pharmacological) interventions of adequate dose and duration. One of the most effective options to treat treatment resistant depression is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), in which a series of brief seizures is intentionally triggered by electrical stimulation of the brain under general anesthesia.
In this project we follow patients throughout ECT treatment compared to patients receiving treatment as usual (TAU) and regularly assess cognitive and affective parameters using behavioral testing as well as biomarkers for brain communication using functional magnetic resonance imaging and blood sampling. We use machine learning methods to characterize patients in terms of cognition, affect and brain communication and to predict their responses to ECT. The PhD candidate will interact with the patients, and will be involved in acquiring, analyzing and interpreting behavioral and imaging data and developing prediction models. The lab’s language is English, but in project C11 interacting with patients requires the ability to converse on a good level in German.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Caroline Nothdurfter
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Molecular Psychopharmacology Group University of Regensburg
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https://www.uni-regensburg.de/medizin/psychiatrie-psychotherapie/forschung/molekulare- neurowissenschaften/index.html
Prof. Dr. Jens Schwarzbach
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Biomedical Imaging Group
University of Regensburg
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https://www.uni-regensburg.de/medizin/psychiatrie-psychotherapie/forschung/biomedizinische-bildgebung/index.html
Project C12: “Brain Representations of Emotional States in Humans”
There are many ways to feel happy, sad, angry, or surprised. Is there a way to identify such emotional states reliably from brain activity? The Biomedical Imaging Group at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Regensburg works on developing brain-based biomarkers of emotions for basic as well as clinical research on emotion and emotion related disorders.
In this project we aim at inducing emotional states and investigating the resulting patterns of brain activity in terms of classification and individualized representational aspects using machine learning approaches such as statistical classifiers, deep neural networks and representational similarity analysis.
We are looking for a PhD candidate from Psychology, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or related fields, preferably with a strong background in computational (neuro-)science.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Jens Schwarzbach
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Biomedical Imaging Group
University of Regensburg
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https://www.uni-regensburg.de/medizin/psychiatrie-psychotherapie/forschung/biomedizinische-bildgebung/index.html
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