PhD (4 years) position “Ultra-High Field FMRI of Human Vision”

The Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, together with the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, is offering a four-year PhD studentship position focused on ultra-high field imaging of human vision, in the lab of PI Tomas Knapen. The goal of this project is to learn how the brain uses low-level sensory primitives to build higher-level cognitive functions such as semantic understanding, memory, and action. We will investigate computations and representations throughout the human visual system, including the hippocampus, using state-of-the-art encoding model approaches to 7-Tesla imaging. The PhD position provides the opportunity to develop and conduct creative and rigorous research on human vision, within a set of stimulating and committed research groups. You will (learn to) conduct state-of-the-art brain imaging experiments that employ both naturalistic and artificial paradigms, and analyze the resulting data with novel models of visual processing. To learn more about the topic of research, please consult this relevant article from the lab.

Resources for attending overseas conferences, and other training opportunities, will be available. Successful candidates will become integrated in the Institute for Brain and Behavior Amsterdam (iBBA) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as well as the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging Amsterdam (the Netherlands). The host institutes – and Amsterdam at large – provide a vibrant international atmosphere with a strong cognitive neuroscience community conducting world-class research, and with access to state-of-the-art facilities and ample opportunities for research support and collaboration. The lingua franca is English.