PhD or Postdoc in social-cognitive neuroscience

What does enable young people to successfully interact with other individuals in our complex societies? Can inter-individual differences in affective empathy at young age predict the likelihood of current and future anti-social behaviors towards others?

If you are curious about these questions and wish to work in a vibrant, multi-center, interdisciplinary and highly collaborative environment, then join us in the GUTS consortium!

GUTS: Growing Up Together in Society
The Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) consortium, funded by a Gravitation grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, includes the collaboration of seven Dutch universities that together investigate how young people successfully navigate and grow up in our complex society.

We will study individual neurobiological development in relation to educational processes, social networks, and societal norms, including antisocial behavior. We will use state-of-the-art designs and methodological advances to develop an integrative framework on self-regulation development and contributions to society that will have explanatory as well as predictive power across multiple domains of functioning in adolescence and early adulthood.

Work description
Your Role

As a PhD or postdoc reseracher you are part of a sub-team of the GUTS project that operates in Amsterdam, which has the unique aim to include 400 young participants (ages 10-12-years) that are at high risk of developing severe behavioral problems.

During your research trajectory, you will mainly focus on understanding the role of affective empathy in developing successful social interactions, in a cohort of children (10-12 years) that are at high risk of developing antisocial and delinquent behavior. Affective empathy will be mainly measured through fMRI as activity in response to the emotional state of other individuals. Social behaviour will be measure through social behavioural tasks and inteviews. During your time in the lab you will have the opportunity to:

• study the role of affective empathy combining forensic-, behavioral- and neuroscience;
• setting up and recruit the high risk antisocial cohort of 400 children in the age range between 10-12, together with the PIs, a postdoc and two other PhDs
• collect and analyze fMRI (the empathy task in particular), behavioural (e.g. a social variation of the flanker task) and interviews (e.g. from questionnaires, and structure interviews) data
• access and analyse previously acquired large cohorts data to develop brain signature to be used to predict anti-social behavior in the newly acquired cohort
• publish your findings in open access scientific journals.
• actively participate in the communication with young people about their perspective on the study an relevant assessments, as well as the clinical and societal impact of your research findings.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, societal engaged researcher at the start of their career, with

• affinity with the forensic youth population;
• a research master in the field of cognitive neuroscience, medicine or behavioural sciences;
• the ability to function well both in a team as well as independently, and possess excellent communication skills;
• the ability to coordinate across two labs in two institutions (NIN and AUMC)
• proven experience with statistics and statistical software, such as JASP and R;
• fluent in Dutch and English. Because of the target population and your active role in recruitment of the cohort, only Dutch speaking candidates can apply;
• experience with fMRI scanning is a plus
• It is important that you are flexibly available, including evenings and weekends, given that we accommodate the needs of our participants. It goes without saying that these working hours are compensated during the week, as we strongly value a healthy work-life balance.
• availability to start the employment before the end of 2024.

Fixed-term contract: 1-3 years.

Terms of employment
Depending on education and experience the minimum salary is € 2872,00 and the maximum salary is € 3670,00 gross per month for a full-time appointment (PhD scale, cao Nederlandse Universiteiten/KNAW). This is exclusive of 8% vacation allowance, 8.3% year-end bonus, travel allowance, internet allowance, home working allowance and pension accrual with ABP.

The KNAW offers its staff an excellent package of secondary benefits. A package that meets the different needs of employees depending on their stage of life, lifestyle or career ambitions. For example, by working an extra two hours a week, it is possible to increase the number of days off from 29 to 41 days a year (with full-time employment).

For a complete overview of the terms of employment, please refer to the web page: werken bij de KNAW.

Applying for a Certificate of Good Conduct can be part of the employment procedure.

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is the country's leading fundamental neuroscience research institute, in the international and progressive city of Amsterdam. It provides a critical mass of scientists (spanning more than 27 nationalities) and neuroscience facilities, in a highly interactive, dynamic, multi-cultural environment, with English as the working language.

The Social Brain Lab (SBL) at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN)

This will be your main home, in which one of your direct supervisor will be working on a daily base and where you will be appointed.

The Social Brain Lab is the results of the joint venture of the research groups of Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola, aiming at shedding light on the neural mechanisms of empathy by combining studies in humans and rodents. The SBL is funded by multiple European (ERC, Marie Curie) and Dutch (VIDI, VICI, Gravity, XL) grants, and is characterized by an unusually diverse environment, with members from all over the world, backgrounds (ranging from philosophy to engineering with an emphasis on biology and psychology), and neuroscientific techniques (spanning from ultra-high field fMRI in humans to single-cell recordings in rodents). The SBL is appreciated for its collaborative, enthusiastic and supportive environment, where people strive to become successful, recognized and appreciated scientists.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Psychosocial Care, at the Amsterdam UMC, within the Section Youth at Risk.

This will be your second home, where your co-supervisor, L. Nauta-Jansen will be located. You'll likely have periodic meetings with colleagues at this location.

Within the section Youth at Risk, we focus on children and adolescents at risk of displaying antisocial and delinquent behavior. We mainly operate within the field of Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Our main aim is to study why some children and adolescents display antisocial or delinquent behavior, why most desist and some persist in that behavior, and what (preventive) interventions are needed to help youth at risk to develop into adults that function well in our complex modern society.

The Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging

This will be the fMRI facilities, where the data will be collected.

The Spinoza is a joint institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, VU University Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Medical Centers. The Centre houses a 3 Tesla and an ultra high-field 7 Tesla MRI-scanner.