The freshly established Perceptual Inference Group at the BCBL studies how the subcortical and early cortical stages of the brain work together to make sense of the sensory world. This project will investigate how the brain learns to predict the onset of incoming sounds with high temporal precision, conforming the sensations of rhythm in speech and music. The project will make use a combination of modelling and high-resolution fMRI to explore the encoding of time in the human brain. This is a fantastic opportunity for cognitive neuroscientists who wish to learn modelling techniques, or for computational neuroscientists who want to learn human neuroimaging. Part of this project will be developed in collaboration with the Department of Psychology of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and there will be opportunities for placements in Leipzig.

Job description:

Designing and conducting behavioural and fMRI experimental research
Designing and implementing computational models of cognition
Writing research papers in collaboration with the PI, aiming to publish at top-tier journals
Dissemination of results at international scientific conferences
Assisting in the supervision of graduate students
Candidates selected for this role may also be appointed to teach within the BCBL Master in cognitive neuroscience of language (https://www.bcbl.eu/en/study-with-us/masters-cognitive-neuroscience-language), subject to further evaluation and approval by the department.

PI and research group:

Perceptual Inference Group is a freshly established interdisciplinary research group at the BCBL in San Sebastian, Spain. The group combines tools from Machine Learning, Computational Neuroscience, and state-of-the-art Human Neuroimaging to explain how our expectations and subjective priors shape our experience of reality. The group has a large network of international collaborations with experimental and computational labs in Leipzig, Dresden, Basel, Pennsylvania, and Cambridge. The PI, Alejandro Tabas, is currently holding an ERC Starting Grant, and the lab has plenty of funding for conference trips and research visits to our collaborators abroad.