About the Project

A PhD studentship position is available with Dr Silvia Maggi and Prof. Mark Humphries at the School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Dr Hazem Toutounji at the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, on a project entitled “Cognitive Flexibility in Dynamic Decision-Making: Unravelling Neurobehavioral Strategies ".

This project will create new, powerful machine-learning approaches to tracking an individual’s decision-making behaviour in an uncertain and changing world. A growing need in the field of Behavioural Neuroscience is to enhance the analysis of decision-making behaviour across various species within dynamic environments. Conventional approaches, such as the psychometric curve, assume a stable environment and the use of a fixed strategy to solve a task, often averaging across multiple subjects. However, it is crucial to characterise individual variations and variability across trials to comprehend how behaviour changes in uncertain and evolving environments.

Our recent Bayesian inference algorithm (Maggi et al., 2023) enables us to track learning and understand how subjects learn by tracking subjects’ use of exploratory strategies. The project will extend this algorithm to solve the problems of determining which of a set of behavioural strategies a subject is using and how to incorporate evidence uncertainty into its detection of the learning of strategies and transitions between them. Using the extended algorithm on datasets of rodents and humans performing decision tasks will let us test a range of hypotheses for how correct decisions are learnt and what innate strategies are used.

The successful candidate should have a good honours degree (at least 2:1 or equivalent) in a relevant discipline, including physics, computer science, maths and engineering.  A Master's qualification is not required at the point of application, but a Master's in a relevant discipline would be an advantage. Experience in programming with Matlab or Python is required, and experience in analysing time series data would be beneficial. The studentship is open to UK citizens; it will offer a stipend of £18,622 for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress.

The student will be part of the Computational Neuroscience Research Group within the School of Psychology. This Group includes Prof Mark van Rossum, Prof Mark Humphries, and Prof Stephen Coombes, bridging the School of Psychology with Mathematical Sciences. The Computational Neuroscience Group is a diverse and highly stimulating environment, including post-docs and PhD students. Within the School of Psychology, the diversity and multi-disciplinarity are enriched by strong research groups in Visual Neuroscience, Behavioural Neuroscience, Perception and Action, and Cognition and Language.

References

Maggi et al., 2023 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.30.505807v3.abstract)

Bähner et al., 2022 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.14.516439v2.abstract)

First Supervisor:  Dr Silvia Maggi (School of Psychology, UoN)

Second Supervisor: Prof Mark Humphries (School of Psychology, UoN)

Third Supervisor: Dr Hazem Toutounji  (Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield)

How to apply:

All applications are to be made directly to the University, selecting PhD Psychology (36 months duration) as the course. Please apply here.

In the research proposal section please only include “Silvia Maggi’s advertised PhD position” in the title. Please note, the application will not be considered if you fail to do so.

The deadline to have completed and submitted your full application is 1st June 2024.

About the Project

The PhD studentship would focus on developing a mechanistic understanding the processes involved in neural entrainment, including the possibility of cross-modal entrainment and the use of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques to produce entrainment. A second focus could be to develop the use of transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation to investigate the role played by deep brain structures (e.g., insula, cingulate cortex, amygdala) in common brain health conditions. We anticipate that the student would be trained in the use of EEG/MEG recording and analysis techniques and in the use of transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation and other non-invasive brain stimulation techniques.

This studentship would suit somebody with an honours level undergraduate degree in experimental psychology, neuroscience, or a related subject. An appropriate masters level degree and/or previous experience with brain imaging (e.g., MRI, EEG, MEG) or brain stimulation (e.g., TMS) techniques would be an advantage.

The PhD would ideally start in October 2024 and is funded by the Science Faculty of the University of Nottingham and the Donders Institute, The Netherlands. We envisage that the student would largely be based in Nottingham but with the possibility of spending time at the Donders Institute as appropriate

The studentship is open to UK citizens; it will offer a stipend of £19,237 for a period of three years, subject to satisfactory progress.

Informal enquiries can be addressed to:

First Supervisor: Professor Stephen Jackson (University of Nottingham)

Second Supervisor: Professor Edward de Haan (Donders Institute)

How to apply:

All applications are to be made directly to the University, selecting PhD Psychology (36 months duration) as the course. Please apply here.

In the research proposal section please only include “Stephen Jackson’s advertised PhD position” in the title. Please note, the application will not be considered if you fail to do so. You are required to upload the following documents to your application:

1. A CV.

2. A cover letter.

3. Transcripts of your BSc and MSc grades (if applicable).

4. Two reference letters (in a non-editable format such as pdf, on headed paper and signed by the referee). At least one of these must be academic.

For any further information such as entry requirements and support you, please click here. 

Application deadline:

The deadline to have completed and submitted your full application is 24th June 2024 (starting 1st October).