Uncovering the multidimensional dimension of autobiographical memories (Dr. Lluís Fuentemilla Garriga)
CENTER
UBNEURO – Institut de Neurociències de la Universitat de Barcelona
CENTER DESCRIPTION
The Institute of Neurosciences is an international, translational research institute of the University of Barcelona. Since its opening in 2015, it has proved to be a frontrunner in international neuroscience research – being one of the few institutes in the world that includes the study of the brain at every level. This includes research groups in neurobiology, neuropharmacology, physiopathology, neurology, psychiatry, clinical psychology, neuropsycobiology and cognitive neurosciences.
The Institute gathers about 300 researchers that belong to the Faculties of Psychology, Medicine, Pharmacy and Biology, and that are distributed among four university campuses (Mundet, Clínic, Bellvitge and Diagonal) in sunny, multicultural Barcelona. We encourage and welcome collaboration with international research groups, teams and individuals to boost our global vision of the Institute.
Our members enjoy benefits such as being part of a close community, learning from some of the best neuroscience researchers in the world, collaborating in both the private and public sectors, and state-of-the-art facilities. One of the biggest events we host for PhD students is an annual PhD workshop. This two-day series includes visiting speakers from throughout Europe, practical skills workshops, and most importantly connects PhD students within the institute to share knowledge, develop solutions together, and set the ground to work together in the future.
ADDRESS
Campus Mundet, Edifici de Ponent
Passeig de la Vall d’Hebron, 171
08035 Barcelona
Tel. +34 934034768
For more information, please contact Dr. Lluís Fuentemilla (llfuentemilla@ub.edu)
Deadline for application: February 6, 2019
POSITION DESCRIPTION
Research Project / Research Group Description:
How do we store our unfolding experience into an organized memory representation and retrieve it in the future in a seemingly effortless manner? Despite remembering ones past is a fundamental operation in our daily life, with a major impact into our well-being and identity, it still remains as one of the most important mysteries nowadays in research.
The current project seeks to break new ground as to how memories from ones past are represented in the brain by tracking, prospectively, essential properties of everyone’s real-life episodic event experience: the moment at which they took place (time), their spatial context (space), their salience (emotion) and their scenario (semantics). Leveraged by the use of wearable devices (i.e., portable cameras and GPS), and the implementation of machine learning algorithms (i.e., deep-learning and Hidden Markov Modelling) on neuroimaging data (i.e., functional magnetic resonance and electrophysiological recordings), we aim to understand the organizational principles that support how individual and real-life autobiographical memories are stored in the brain. The research agenda will build-up on preliminary findings in our lab which, which showed that real life memories are temporally clustered by their spatial proximity and semantic relatedness. Furthermore, the project will examine the extent to which these representational memory dimensions are impacted in temporal lobe chronic epileptic patients with selective lesions in the hippocampus that showed autobiographical memory impairments. As a result, the project is expected to provide insights in the much-needed development of health-oriented technology to foster novel therapeutic strategies to treat memory problems in aging and clinical population.
Job position description:
The PhD candidate will work in an international and multidisciplinary research group, the Dynamics of Memory Formation (DMF) led by Dr. Lluís Fuentemilla. DMF wants to understand how experiences are initially encoded, undergo further consolidation and are later retrieved. DMF belongs to the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit (www.brainvitge.org), which includes >20 young scientists with interests in many facets of cognitive neuroscience (e.g., language, neuroimaging, music, learning).
Given the strong analytical approach of the project, the requirements of the position include: University Degree in Engineering, Physics or Mathematics with a master degree in cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience or biomedical engineering. Demonstrated skills in one or more programming language (e.g., MATLAB, Python) and experience with cognitive neuroscience methods (especially fMRI or EEG) will be valued skills. The applicant will have an interest in translating basic cognitive neuroscience methods to clinical research questions, fluent English and Teamwork capability.
The successful applicant will be responsible to coordinate, acquire, analyze behavioral and neuroimaging data from healthy and clinical population samples. The PhD candidate will disseminate results from the project to scientific and non-scientific audience and will have a promising research publication record.