Post-doc on Meditation and the Predictive Brain

The project aims to determine the plasticity of the predictive mind using meditation. It starts from the notion that our brain is fundamentally an organ of prediction, continuously predicting or constructing a view of the world based on past experiences and statistical regularities in the environment in service of (future) action. It builds on the proposal (Laukkonen & Slagter, 2021) that certain meditation practices can reduce predictive processing through physical and mental in-action: by bringing the practitioner in the present moment, unaffected by what just happened or may happen in the future. Adopting this perspective of meditation not only inspires a new understanding of the effects of meditation on brain, mind (e.g., attention, the sense of self, awareness), and well-being, but also opens many interesting research questions about the plasticity and automaticity of predictive processing. The postdoc would uniquely contribute and drive research on this topic.

In the Cognition and Plasticity lab, we take an integrative focus, aiming to bring together research on perception, consciousness, and attention with that on action and active inference. We use multiple methodologies, with a current focus on EEG, eye-tracking, and virtual reality, but also some fMRI. More details are available on request from Prof Heleen Slagter, h.a.slagter@vu.nl.

Your duties

• map out existing literature and generate new ideas
• co-design and implement new experiments and collect data
• analyze, and curate (existing) data
• report on the findings in local meetings and inter(national) conferences
• write several scientific articles
• assist in (minor) teaching activities within the department
• contribute to the team spirit and help others achieve their goals

Requirements:

• You successfully completed a PhD in experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience or a related field. If you have not quite finished yet, you may still apply.
• You have clear affinity with the topic of the postdoc project. Prior experience with meditation and/or conducting meditation research is considered a plus.
• You have demonstrable experience in designing and interpreting cognitive experiments and with quantitative research methods, such as EEG or fMRI.
• You have excellent programming skills in Python, Matlab, or equivalent.
• You have excellent verbal and written English language skills
• You are a team player with good communicative abilities

Salary Benefits:

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of minimum € 3.345,00 (Scale 10) and maximum € 5.278,00 (Scale 10) gross per month, on a full-time basis. This is based on UFO profile Researcher 4. The exact salary depends on your education and experience.
• a position for 1 FTE. Your employment contract will last 18 months.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and regulations. Some examples:

• A full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package
• discounts on collective insurances (healthcare- and car insurance);

Van der Boechorststraat 7