Topic: neural data

Investigate how mice learn and generalize between virtual and real environments in the Optophysiology Lab at IMBIT. The project combines behavioural experiments, neural recordings and quantitative analysis with development and in-vivo validation of a two-photon miniscope. The researcher will contribute to device design, model behavioural and neural data, and help interpret and publish findings. The 65% appointment is funded for three years, with a possible extension; the advertised initial term ends on 30 November 2029. Pay follows E13 TV-L. Applications close on 31 October 2026.

Although each of us was once a baby, infant consciousness remains mysterious and there is no received view about when, and in what form, consciousness first emerges. Some theorists defend a ‘late-onset’ view, suggesting that consciousness requires cognitive capacities which are unlikely to be in place before the child’s first birthday at the very earliest. Other theorists defend an ‘early-onset’ account, suggesting that consciousness is likely to be in place at birth (or shortly after) and may even arise during the third trimester. Progress in this field has been difficult, not just because of

Clinical assessment of consciousness is a significant issue, with recent research suggesting some brain-damaged patients who are assessed as unconscious are in fact conscious. Misdiagnosis of consciousness can also be detrimental when it comes to general anaesthesia, causing numerous psychological problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Avoiding awareness with overdose of anaesthetics, however, can also lead to cognitive impairment. Currently available objective assessment of consciousness is limited in accuracy or requires expensive equipment with major barriers to translation. I

Disentangling independent latent components from neural data is a desirable goal in neuroscience. Independent component analysis (ICA) has been used to identify disentangled latent neural trajectories and their corresponding sub-brain maps from recorded imaging sequences. However, enforcing full independence between all latent components may be overly restrictive, as each independent neural trajectory and sub-brain map results in a rank-1 imaging sequence. Additionally, the connectivity inferred from a rank-1 sub-brain map produces a rank-1 connectivity matrix, which may lack expressiveness. T