Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Neuroscience: Effects of Neuromodulation on Coding in Efficient Coding Networks

For the Vidi project ‘Top-down neuromodulation and bottom-up network computation,’ we seek a postdoc to study neuromodulators in efficient spike-coding networks. Using our lab’s data on dopamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin from the mouse barrel cortex, you’ll derive models connecting single cells, networks, and behavior.

The aim of this project is to explain the effects of neuromodulation on task performance in biologically realistic spiking recurrent neural networks (SRNNs). You will use the efficient spike coding framework, in which a network is not trained by a learning paradigm but deduced using mathematically rigorous rules that enforce efficient coding (i.e. maximally informative spikes). You will study how the network’s structural properties such as neural heterogeneity influence decoding performance and efficiency. You will incorporate realistic network properties of the (barrel) cortex based on our lab’s measurements and incorporate the cellular effects of dopamine, acetylcholine and serotonin we have measured over the past years into the network, to investigate their effects on representations, network activity measures such as dimensionality, and decoding performance. You will build on the single cell data, network models and analysis methods available in our group, and your results will be incorporated into our group’s further research to develop and validate efficient coding models of (somatosensory) perception. Therefore, we are looking for a team player who is willing to learn from the other group members and to share their knowledge with them.

Requirements:

• You hold a PhD in computational neuroscience, mathematics, physics, computer science, AI or a similar computational field.
• You have experience working with coding models in computational neuroscience and can perform network simulations, analytical derivations and advanced data analysis.
• You are a highly motivated, independent, critical and creative researcher who wants to bridge the gap between real data and abstract theoretical models.
• You are a team player, ready to collaborate in a diverse, multidisciplinary research group.
• You have an excellent command of spoken and written English.
• You have coding experience (in Python and/or Matlab).

Salary Benefits:

• We will give you a temporary employment contract of 26 months.
• Your salary within salary scale 10 depends on your previous education and number of years of (relevant) work experience. The amounts in the scale are based on a 38-hour working week.
• You will receive an 8% holiday allowance and an 8,3% end-of-year bonus.
• You will receive extra days off. With full-time employment, you can choose between 30 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the statutory 20.

Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions. You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.

38 hours per week

Houtlaan 4