My new lab – Psychiatry in Action – is looking for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to lead a 5-year-funded project looking at how people perceive effort.
Although significant progress has been made in understanding motivation, a critical yet understudied aspect of human motivation is how we perceive and respond to effort: when we feel motivated to do something or ‘up for it’, we can perform the hardest of tasks, but when not, even the most mundane task feels extremely difficult. Changes in how people perceive effort are common across individuals as a result of neuropsychiatric conditions and within individuals as a function of sleep, mood and so forth. What underlies these changes remain largely unclear.
To better understand the determinants of effort perception, the project will use various neurophysiological measures in humans, including EEG, pupillometry and metabolic measures in tasks requiring physical and/or cognitive effort.
The ideal candidate will have:
* Background in neuroscience or a related field
* Programming experience in python and/or Matlab
* Experience in using computational models of behavioural data
* Experience in acquiring and analysing neurophysiological measures is a huge plus!
Funded positions are available from Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine, and the candidate can spend some of their research time at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. Full-time positions at Cambridge are available but require an additional application for funding. If interested, please send your CV and a short (500 word) motivation (!) letter to nwolpe@tau.ac.il, and if relevant we can arrange to meet and chat about the position further. Please also feel free to email me for any informal enquiries.
