Looking for Postdoctoral Researcher - Cognitive Neuroscience; Perception; Multisensory; EEG; Bayesian Modelling

This is a postdoctoral opportunity to work in the Multisensory Research Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Applications are invited for a full-time post-doctoral position to contribute to our research on multisensory perception using modelling and EEG approaches. The project is led by Salvador Soto-Faraco, at the Center for Brain and Cognition -- Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). The position is funded by the project ‘Multisensory Integration and Conflict’ from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2019-108531GB-I00 AEI/FEDER).

The position

We seek excellent and highly motivated candidates with a background in cognitive neuroscience, biomedicine, psychology or related fields, although all backgrounds will be considered if the candidate’s experience aligns with the project goals. Necessary expertise: EEG and data analysis skills (demonstrable with publications), familiarity with advanced statistical methods. Desirable: Prior experience in multisensory processes; Experience in modelling behavioral and/or neuroimaging data, using Bayesian Causal Inference. The project’s goal is to understand the interplay between cognitive conflict mechanisms and multisensory perception (see project summary below).

IMPORTANT: This is a short-term postdoc (until the end of 2023). However, we will give especial consideration to candidates who have the solid intention to seek for longer term opportunities to work in our group. Therefore, we welcome candidates who are eligible for, and stand good chances to, obtain funding to continue their research lines under a competitive postdoctoral programme such as the MSCF,  La Caixa Junior Leader , EUTOPIA postdoctoral fellowship or Juan de la Cierva . 

Conditions

The position is full-time and will be funded until de end of 2023.  Starting date: May 2023 or as soon as possible thereafter. Salary (gross before tax):  2,800 Eur. month. Remote working is not possible since the job may require laboratory work.

Eligibility

The candidate must be able to legally work in Spain.

PhD title, or equivalent research experience.

How to apply

Please, send an expression of interest (or other enquiries about the position) to [email protected]. Include the following:

- C.V., a cover letter describing your research interests and experience, contact details of two academic referees, and a sample of your previous work (publication/s, thesis, and/or other scientific outputs).

Please, mention that you are applying to the PSI2019 MRG POSTDOCTORAL position in the email subject. We will consider candidates until the position is filled.

Project summary

Humans sample information from a rich diversity of sensory systems. These different information channels allow us to exploit correlations between various sensory features and eventually form coherent perceptual representations of the objects in the environment. Many popular phenomena used to address these multisensory interactions are based on inter-sensory conflict, such as for example the Ventriloquist Illusion, the McGurk effect, the Rubber Hand Illusion, just to name a few. What is more, the Bayesian framework of multisensory perception, which is the dominant current approach, is grounded on evidence from experiments precisely manipulating crossmodal disparity. Despite the prominent role of cross-modal disparity in all these approaches, it is remarkable that prior work on multisensory perception has taken little notice of the role of conflict. Here, we propose that conflict is not only a shortcut to reveal possible multisensory interactions in the laboratory, but a fundamental vehicle for information integration via the cognitive conflict brain network. In particular, the present proposal addresses the hypothesis that the conflict monitoring system plays a role in multisensory perception by regulating different possible representations of the incoming sensory inputs. We think that applying the cognitive conflict framework to perception may fit well with current accounts of multisensory perception based on Bayesian principles and can be generalised to perceptual inference in general. But, why may conflict processing be relevant for multisensory perception? The idea inherits from our previous work on multisensory integration and attention and from the predictive coding theory. According to predictive coding, during the process of perception noisy evidence arriving from the different senses are compared to predictions based on internal representations, and the output of this comparison is used in turn to recurrently update these internal representations. We hypothesise that during this inference process, cross-modal disparity between the inputs engages the conflict network. Furthermore, we posit that these conflict responses reflect competition between alternative internal models that help arbitrate between fused or segregated representations of the sensory inputs. We plan to proof the concept of our hypothesis by implementing eight experiments using behavioural and EEG measures. Our team combines expertise in EEG analysis, psychophysics, brain oscillations and multisensory integration. To the best of our knowledge this is an original approach to understand multisensory processes, because cognitive conflict theory has been mostly developed using sensorimotor conflict rather than perceptual conflict. Accomplishing the goals of this project will shed new light on the mechanisms that allow humans to form unified and coherent representations of the sensory environment. It should also help bridge the gap between two successful, but currently unconnected theories about the human brain: Predictive coding on the one hand, and cognitive conflict on the other.