The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language – BCBL (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) is offering one 4-year funded doctoral opportunity to integrate the Educational Neuroscience and Developmental Disorders group led by Dr. Marie Lallier (m.lallier@bcbl.eu). The candidate will work on the BILREADY project funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2022-136989OB-I00). In that project, we aim to determine whether highly efficient interhemispheric connectivity during speech processing could enhance the phonological and reading skills of children with and without dyslexia. The present doctoral project will focus on the design and validation of a novel and cutting-edge intervention focused on boosting interhemispheric connectivity during speech processing through neurofeedback using electroencephalography (EEG). The expected results of this project should have a significant impact on all the levels of translational research in contributing to identifying mechanisms that can be trained to foster cognitive strategies subtending learning how to read, and learning, more broadly. The appointed candidate will work in close collaboration with the group of Dr. M. Lizarazu and Dr. M. Ruzzoli from the BCBL, as well as with Dr. M. Bourguignon (Brussels University) to develop the neurofeedback protocol at stake.


Job description:

The appointed candidate will work on designing the neurofeedback protocol and validating it in children with and without reading difficulties. The neurofeedback pipeline will be based on the real time analysis of the responses evoked by speech stimuli in the left and right hemispheres through EEG. The main task of the candidate will require analyzing and processing EEG signals in response to speech and develop the neurofeedback pipeline.


PI and research group:

Our group’s main research objectives aim at elucidating the neurocognitive mechanisms subtending typical and atypical language and reading development while transferring this knowledge to clinical and educational practice. Our research projects are driven by the desire to reach a better understanding as to why some individuals struggle to acquire language, in its oral or written forms, and of the neurocognitive and environmental factors that play a significant role in the manifestations of these developmental language disorders (e.g., bilingualism, language characteristics, musical practice, etc). Our group uses various techniques (e.g., behavioral testing, EEG, MEG) and designs (cross-linguistic, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and training studies) in bilingual and monolingual populations including infants, children, and adults, with and without language and reading disorders. We are strongly committed to transferring our fundamental research into practice, and are actively collaborating with clinicians and educators to improve the early detection, diagnosis and remediation of children with developmental language and reading difficulties.