The Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory

PRE- AND POST-DOCTORAL POSITIONS AVAILABLE

November 14th, 2008 | Postdoctoral Associate: Dual-EEG Studies of Team Dynamics

The position will be for one year with the possibility of extension depending on satisfactory progress. Salary will be commensurable with experience. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Qualified candidates should send CV and arrange for 3 reference letters via email to:

J. A. Scott Kelso kelso at ccs.fau.edu
E. Tognoli tognoli at ccs.fau.edu
www.ccs.fau.edu/hbbl.html
HBBL, Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences,
Florida Atlantic University.
Boca Raton, FL
USA

July 14th, 2008 | Postdoctoral Position: EEG and Behavioral Dynamics of Social Coordination

------------------This position is filled --------------------------

The Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory (HBBL), Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) is offering a Postdoctoral Position in the area of Social Neuroscience.
The research program aims to study the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying social coordination: how brain regions couple and decouple both within an individual brain and between brains engaged in social interactions, what factors enhance or degrade the informational coupling between them, or affect the directionality of behavioral influence. The postdoctoral scientist will be highly motivated and will be able to work independently. He/she will also collaborate within an interdisciplinary team of researchers whose expertise spans Neuroscience, Psychology and Physics with the goal of understanding brains and behaviors in terms of complex dynamical systems. The successful applicant will contribute to behavioral and neurobehavioral experiments and to theoretical modeling, in which social interactions are treated as meaningfully coupled dynamical systems. The laboratory is equipped with a high density EEG system (Neuroscan Synamp II) including dual-EEG capability, sound-isolated faraday chamber, Polhemus Isotrack II and Fastrak electrode positioning system, software suites for source reconstruction and multimodal brain imaging (Curry 5). Behavioral facility includes a Northern Digital OPTOTRAK 3010 and mutichannel Analog input/output systems by National Instrument. A 3T Signa Excite MR scanner is also available for extending the work to fMRI and DTI and possibilities for MEG and PET tracer studies are in place. Computationally intensive applications can be directed to a Beowulf cluster maintained by FAU Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.
Candidates should have a PhD degree or equivalent, experience or willingness to learn in one or more relevant domains will be considered an advantage:
- Preparation and conduct of social, neurobehavioral or neurocognitive experiments
- Recording and analysis of EEG or MEG
- Digital signal processing and statistical analysis
- Programming (Matlab, C, visual basic)
- Theoretical modeling, dynamical systems
- Excellent writing skills
The position will be for one year with the possibility of extension depending on satisfactory progress. Salary will be commensurable with experience.
Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Qualified candidates should send CV and arrange for 3 reference letters via email to:
J. A. Scott Kelso, kelso at ccs.fau.edu
Emmanuelle Tognoli, tognoli at ccs.fau.edu
www.ccs.fau.edu/hbbl.html
HBBL, Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University. Boca Raton, FL USA

Spring 2008 | Postdoctoral Associate: Neuroimaging and Brain Injury

------------------This position is filled --------------------------

The Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory (HBBL) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) seeks to hire a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the area of neuroimaging and brain injury. The successful candidate will work on an NINDS funded project using functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neurophysiological basis of cognitive deficits resulting from mild brain injury and associated mechanisms underlying recovery of function. The research will be carried out using a GE 3.0T MRI located on the FAU campus. A 128 channel Neuroscan EEG system is also available on site and possibilities for extending the work to include MEG and PET tracer studies are in place.

The ideal candidate will have a keen interest in the study of mild brain injury and concussion and how they relate to known behavioral and cognitive deficits. The applicant should have experience with functional imaging techniques especially fMRI. Familiarity with the computational and analytical tools (e.g., AFNI, SPM, Visual Basic, Matlab, Lisrel, Linux, etc.) necessary to run studies and analyze large data sets will be considered an advantage. The position will be for one year with the possibility of extension depending on satisfactory progress. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Qualified candidates should send CV and arrange for 3 reference letters via email to:

J A Scott Kelso, kelso@ccs.fau.edu
HBBL, Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences,
Florida Atlantic University.

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RESEARCH TRAINING PROJECTS
(request more information)

1. Neuromarkers of social coordination/interpersonal dynamics
Social Neuroscience is a rapidly developing field that aims to understand how various aspects social behavior are processed in the brain. The trainee will study spatio-temporal signatures of brain activity observed during various phases of interpersonal coordination.

2. Neural correlates of attention
The purpose of this study is to identify the neural signatures of motor attention. The trainee will participate in the collection of EEG data during performance of visuo-motor attention tasks and will contribute to data analysis.

3. How does the brain control movement?
Motor Related Cortical Potentials (MRCPs) are evoked responses of the cortex that are observed during preparation, execution and monitoring of bodily movements. They are recorded using EEG and are a window into understanding how the brain controls individual body parts and their coordinated action. The trainee will analyze the spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity observed during stable patterns of unimanual and bimanual movements.

4. Brain correlates of multisensory and motor integration
The brain is organized with a certain degree of areal specialization: a great deal of visual processing taking place in the occipito-parietal regions, auditory processing found in the temporal areas, somatosensory processing in the post-central and motor in the precentral areas. This project aims at understanding how different sensory and motor systems collaborate together at times during which their coordinated activity is required ecologically valid tasks). The trainee will analyze spatio-temporal patterns of brain activity and interareal coupling in EEG data recorded during multimodal sensory and motor processing.

5. Coupling rhythms in the brain
Mu and beta are two EEG rhythms that relate to the brain processing of movement at around 10Hz and 20Hz. They are said to be quasi-harmonically related. The trainee will study EEG data recorded during steady-states of finger movements to identify power, phase and phase-power dependency between these two rhythms, and their contribution to the cortical dynamics of human movement.

6. Brain Computer Interfaces
Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) are computer devices that are controlled in real-time using some measures of brain activity, for instance EEG. This project aims at studying the brain oscillatory activity in the alpha and beta range (brain waves at 8-12Hz and 13-30Hz) during a series of cognitive sensory and motor tasks to explore the signals that optimally support a BCI. Emphasis will be given to the question of inter-individual variability.

7. Visuospatial constraints on interpersonal coordination.
When a subject performs an action that relates to a perceived object, a strong constraint on performance is the compatibility between the spatial location or direction of movement of the stimulus and the produced action (Simon effect). When a subject performs an action that relates to another person's action, muscular homologies dominate. The trainee will study the interactions between these two mechanisms in a behavioral experiment.

Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences - Florida Atlantic University
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science

The Human Brain and Behavior Laboratory

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