The In Vivo Neurophysiology team is looking for a postdoc for a 3-year project that will be carried out at the Integrative Neurophysiology (INF) division at the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR) at the VU Amsterdam (chair prof.dr. Huib Mansvelder).
https://inf.cncr.nl/research_teams/in_vivo_neurophysiology/See, touch, feel! How does our brain combine different senses?Our brain has specialized regions to encode information from our five main senses. To experience the world around us, senses need to be combined, but we do not yet understand how our brain performs this function. We will test the hypothesis that the cerebral cortex combines information already in areas specialized for a single sense. We will record brain activity in behaving animals performing a combined touch-vision task to understand how multisensory information is coded. Detailed understanding of the mechanisms operating at the level of cells and brain systems can provide clues to develop therapeutic treatments after brain damage.
As postdoc in the
in vivo neurophysiology team, your research will aim to elucidate cell-type specific function in primary visual cortex underlying the emergence of multi-sensory integration and sensory-guided decision-making.
This postdoc project is funded through a collaborative grant from NWO (ENW-M-2), which involves a synergistic collaboration with prof. Cyriel Pennartz from the University of Amsterdam and a 2nd postdoc position at UvA-SILS. The VU position will focus on disentangling the cellular substrates during multisensory processing, whereas the postdoc position at the UvA will elucidate the contribution of ensembles of neurons to the same standardized behavioral task. We envision surplus value by constantly aligning the 2 postdoc projects through regular meetings (see also
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.22.449366v1).
The INF department and CNCR institute are the home of several groups at the frontier of studying the link between brain circuitry and well-defined rodent behavior. The postdoc project will be fully integrated with ongoing research and the postdoc candidate will experience a jump-start because necessary techniques and expertise are readily available within the project and associated research teams.
Your duties
- You will use a repertoire of state-of-the-art approaches in circuit neuroscience such as single unit and population electrophysiology in anaesthetized and behaving mice, opto- or chemogenetics and histology
- You will have the opportunity to supervise Bachelor's and Master's students
- Work in close collaboration with the UvA postdoc and group