[visionlist] Postdoc position: Neurocomputational mechanisms of decision making

Simon Kelly spkell at gmail.com
Fri Dec 27 06:07:01 -05 2024


Applications are invited for a postdoc position in the Kelly lab in
University College Dublin, to work on a project examining the task-adaptive
role of evidence accumulation in perceptual decision making using human
neurophysiology combined with computational modelling. This project is
funded under a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, by the SFI-HRB-Wellcome
Research Partnership.

The extent to which evidence accumulation underpins decision formation in
some or all perceptual tasks is still widely debated. Accordingly, there
now exist many distinct, alternative mathematical decision models that
limit the role of evidence accumulation in various ways, most notably
through leaky integration or "collapsing" decision bounds. The trouble is,
these alternative models can often be made to fit behavioral data equally
well but lead to fundamentally different inferences. With the rapidly
growing use of these models across many basic and clinical research
domains, it is past time that we knew whether, why and how these
alternative mechanisms are invoked across different task scenarios,
including ones representative of real life. This project will draw on novel
neurally-informed modelling approaches developed by our lab (see, e.g.
[1-3]) and others, to uncover core principles governing how
neurocomputational decision processes are flexibly adapted to diverse task
demands.

The Kelly lab is based in the School of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering in University College Dublin, Ireland, and is affiliated with
the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. It has strong collaborative
links to basic and clinical cognitive neuroscience research groups
employing a range of methods, both locally and internationally. The
successful candidate will have ample opportunities for wider collaborations
and the learning of new skills.

Interested candidates should submit their CV and a brief research statement
describing their background and research interests and how they align with
the project and the broader interests of the Kelly lab. Please submit these
materials through the UCD job vacancies site (
https://www.ucd.ie/workatucd/jobs/ - search for job ref number 018049),
before the deadline of Jan 30 2025. The position is intended to start in
April 2025, with some flexibility. It is for 18 months, with the
possibility of an additional 6 months extension.

[1] Corbett EA, Martinez-Rodriguez LA, Judd C, O'Connell RG, Kelly SP.
Multiphasic value biases in fast-paced decisions. Elife. 2023 12:e67711.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.67711.
[2] Kelly SP, Corbett EA, O'Connell RG. Neurocomputational mechanisms of
prior-informed perceptual decision making in humans. Nature Human
Behaviour. 2021 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00967-9.
[3] O'Connell RG, Shadlen MN, Wong-Lin K, Kelly SP. Bridging Neural and
Computational Viewpoints on Perceptual Decision-Making. Trends Neurosci.
2018;41(11):838‐852. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2018.06.005
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