Postdoctoral Position, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Applications are invited for an NIH funded postdoctoral position combining eye tracking and intracranial EEG recordings in humans to study the neural basis of face recognition, object recognition, and social and affective perception, at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
The research will focus on understanding the dynamic neural code that underlies the recognition of faces, bodies, objects, facial expressions, and other social and affective stimuli and how this information guides, and is guided by, eye movements. Of particular interest is how this information is coded in interactive neural circuits at the level of large-scale brain networks. The neural data will primarily be local field potentials/ event related potential from intracranial surface electrodes (electrocorticography, ECoG), cortical depth electrodes, and subcortical depth electrodes in humans in conjunction with eye tracking. There is also the potential for studies involving direct cortical stimulation to assess how neural modulation alters visual perception.
The ideal applicant would hold a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Psychology, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering or a related field. Strong technical, computational, and statistical skills are required. Experience with combining eye tracking and electrophysiological data is required (for example, scalp EEG and eye tracking). Applicants should have a strong track record of publication.
Pittsburgh is consistently ranked the most livable city in America and the neuroscientific community here, particularly at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, is both very strong and collaborative.
Interested applicants should send a letter of interest, a CV, and the names and contact information for 3 researchers who can provide a recommendation. For further information or to submit an application, please contact Avniel Ghuman, Ph.D. at ghumana(a)upmc.edu and see our website at www.lcnd.pitt.edu<http://www.lcnd.pitt.edu>
Apologies for cross-postings
Call for challenge participation
Fourth Emotion Recognition in the Wild (EmotiW) Challenge 2016
@ ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2016, Tokyo
https://sites.google.com/site/emotiw2016/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Emotion Recognition in the Wild 2016 Challenge consists of multimodal
classification challenges, which mimics real-world conditions.
Traditionally, emotion recognition has been performed on laboratory
controlled data. While undoubtedly worthwhile at the time, such lab
controlled data poorly represents the environment and conditions faced in
real-world situations. With the increase in the number of video clips
online, it is worthwhile to explore the performance of emotion recognition
methods that work ‘in the wild’. There are two sub-challenges: audio-video
based emotion recognition in videos and group-level emotion recognition in
the images (new).
Timeline:
Train and val data available: shared!
Test data available: 30th June 2016
Last date for uploading the results: 15th July 2016
Paper submission deadline: 25th July 2016
Notification of acceptance: 25th August 2016
Camera-ready: September 2016
Organisers
Abhinav Dhall, Roland Goecke, Jyoti Joshi and Tom Gedeon
Contact
emotiw2014(a)gmail.com
PhD position (urgent):
Understanding the dynamic of facial expression decoding mechanisms by means of an electrophysiologic approach by fast periodic visual stimulation
Being able to quickly read emotional expression from the face is critical for human social interactions. Six facial expressions – fear, disgust, sadness, happiness, angry, surprise – also known as the ‘basic emotions’ have been suggested to be universally recognized (Ekman & Friesen, 1975). Studies on facial emotional processing have produced evidence for impairments in neurological and psychiatric populations, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, patients may often compensate on explicit behavioral tasks and fail on implicit face processing tasks, which suggests that they rely less on automatic emotion processing, but employ cognitive, language-based or perceptual compensatory mechanisms.
This PhD proposal will focus on understanding the decoding of facial expression in typical human population by means of the rapid presentation of brief expression changes and the recording of implicit measures with electroencephalography (EEG). Specifically, we will rely on a fast periodic visual stimulation approach (FPVS) during EEG recording. Intracerebral recordings of patients suffering from epilepsy refractory to medication with the same paradigms will aim at understanding the neural basis of facial expression decoding.
The PhD will be supervised by S. Caharel & J. Lighezzolo-Alnot at the Laboratory INTERPSY at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, France (http://interpsy.univ-lorraine.fr/content/stéphanie-caharel <http://interpsy.univ-lorraine.fr/content/st%8Ephanie-caharel>), and L. Maillard at the CHU of Nancy for intracerebral recording studies. Studies with the FPVS approach in EEG will be performed in close collaboration with B. Rossion and M. Dzhelyova at the University of Louvain in Belgium (http://face-categorization-lab.webnode.com/) <http://face-categorization-lab.webnode.com/)>.
The position involves a temporary appointment for 3 years, with a starting date on September/October 2016. Applications should be completed ideally by june 20th.
For more information, please contact:
Stéphanie Caharel by email: stephanie.caharel(a)univ-lorraine.fr <mailto:stephanie.caharel@univ-lorraine.fr>
Candidate requirements
We will consider highly motivated candidates with a degree in neuroscience, neuropsychology, biomedical sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, physics etc. A high level of written and spoken English is required. The ideal candidate will have good programming skills for the setting up and adaptation of stimulation paradigms and data analysis, experience with neurophysiological techniques such as EEG, and a background in cognitive neuroscience. Knowledge of the topic of research – face perception - is an asset.
Supervision
- Stéphanie Caharel, Associate Professor of Neuropsychology, Lab Interpsy (EA 4432), University of Lorraine (stephanie.caharel(a)univ-lorraine.fr <mailto:stephanie.caharel@univ-lorraine.fr>)
- Joëlle Lighezzolo-Alnot, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Lab Interpsy (EA 4432), University of Lorraine (joelle.lighezzolo(a)univ-lorraine.fr <mailto:joelle.lighezzolo@univ-lorraine.fr>)
- Louis Maillard, Pr. of Neurology, University Hospital of Nancy, CRAN UMR CNRS 7039, University of Lorraine (l.maillard(a)chru-nancy.fr <mailto:l.maillard@chru-nancy.fr>)
Main Laboratory: Lab of Psychology “InterPsy” (EA 4432) – University of Lorraine: http://interpsy.univ-lorraine.fr <http://interpsy.univ-lorraine.fr/>
Other Labs associated: CRAN (UMR CNRS 7039) - University of Lorraine; Face Categorization Lab, UCLouvain, Belgium (http://face-categorization-lab.webnode.com/ <http://face-categorization-lab.webnode.com/>)
To apply, please send application letter, CV, academic results (master’s degree) and two letters of recommendation before June 20, 2016 to the ED 78 Stanislas doctoral school and to Stéphanie Caharel (stephanie.caharel(a)univ-lorraine.fr) <mailto:stephanie.caharel@univ-lorraine.fr)> (with ‘PhD application 2016’ as subject line)
