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[HIRING] PhD position in Neurophysiology

Date(s)

du 6 juin 2020 au 31 juillet 2020

Sous la direction scientifique du Dr. Marie Gomot

Emotional prosody processing in Autism spectrum disorders: behavioral and neurophysiological approach

Keywords

Autism – Perception – Emotion – Neurophysiology - Psychophysics

Required experience

Student with a Master or equivalent degree in Neuroscience, Psychology or Cognitive Sciences

Constraint

Good French language level is needed to interact with children and adults with ASD.

Abstract

At the interface between neurophysiology, psychiatry and cognitive psychology, this 3-years PhD position fully funded by a grant from the ANR, will be part of the SEPIA project (Sensory and Emotional Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorders) initiated in May 2020, thanks to the collaboration between the 'UMR1253 iBrain from Tours and IRCAM / CNRS in Paris.

Both socio-emotional impairments and repetitive behaviors/restricted interests are required to establish a diagnosis of autism (ASD). Yet, little research has attempted to integrate socio‐emotional and perceptive processes to explain ASD impairments: whether difficulties in ASD are related to specifically-emotional deficits, to sensory particularities which are even more marked for social stimuli, or both, still remains to be established. Using smiling voice as a model, project SEPIA (Sensory and Emotional Processing In Autism spectrum disorders) proposes to explore all three major steps of the emotional Perception-Representation-Action loop in the same children and adults participants.

The sensory level, with the exploration of the brain correlates of auditory regularity encoding is under study. The work of the doctoral student will focus on the characterization of mental representations of prototypical auditory smile, and on the investigation of the motor and autonomic mimicry by the collection of behavioural (reverse correlation) and physiological (facial electromyography, pupilometry) data respectively, while participants listen to vocal expressions and judge de smiliness of the stimuli.

Doing so will allow to disentangle sensory and emotion-related processes, and to determine at which level physio pathological processes potentially operate, thus providing novel mechanistic insights into the socio-emotional difficulties in ASD.

Offer

3-years PhD position in the Autism Group of the Neurofunctional Psychiatry team (UMR1253 iBrain, Université de Tours, Inserm).
Beginning : 01/10/2020

Contact

Marie Gomot : marie.gomot@univ-tours.fr
To apply please send a CV (including the email address of one academic referee) and a short motivation letter (1p. max.). A copy of the Master degree thesis would be appreciated.
Applications will be considered until July the 12th, 2020, 11pm.
Contact :
Dr. Marie Gomot :