An Adversarial Collaboration about the Nerual Basis of Perception and Mental imagery
Project Description
We are seeking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on-site in Boston, Massachusetts. The candidate will perform research as part of a funded project on visual perception and mental imagery. This research will uses neuroimaging (fMRI), psychophysics (in person and online), computational modeling, and machine learning to arbitrate among competing hypotheses about the neural mechanisms of conscious awareness. This project is part of an adversarial collaboration funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) through their Accelerating Research on Consciousness initiative to empirically evaluate different higher-order theories of consciousness. You can read more about this project following these links:
Templeton Accelerating Research on Consciousness Initiative (Project 6)
The overarching goal of the project is to arbitrate between four higher order theories: Higher-Order State Space model (HOSS; Fleming, 2020), Perceptual Reality Monitoring theory (PRM; Lau, 2019), Higher-Order Representation of a Representation (HOROR; Brown, 2015), and Self-Organising Meta-Representational theory (SOMA; Cleeremans, 2011; Cleeremans et al., 2020). The disagreement within Higher Order Theories of consciousness (HOTs) varies along two axes. One axis examines to what degree higher-order representations are rich or sparse. A second (related) axis of disagreement is on whether higher-order representations can “misrepresent” their first-order targets, and in what way. The two axes of disagreement will be tested in distinct experiments with a number of convergent methodologies. HOTs hypotheses cross-cut a number of different theories, with different theorists placing greater or lesser weight on the two axes. We seek to devise experiments that can identify whether the data are more consistent with one or other pole of these two axes.
In particular, this project involves experiments designed to provide a critical test of 1) whether perceptual/imagery vividness is coded in a rich or sparse manner, and 2) whether the nature of perceptual experience (“seeing” vs. “imagining”) relies on a dedicated higher-order reality monitoring signal (PRM), or whether inference on reality depends on thresholding a unidimensional code for phenomenal magnitude (HOSS).
Overall project personnel:
- Lead PIs: Stephen Fleming and Axel Cleeremans
- Project PIs: Jorge Morales, Megan Peters, Nadine Dijkstra, Rachel Denison, Zoltan Dienes, Guy Cheron
- Scientific steering committee: Hakwan Lau, Richard Brown, Stephen Fleming, Axel Cleeremans, Elisabeth Pacherie
- External advisory board: David Rosenthal, Matthias Michel, Joseph LeDoux, Lucie Charles
Postdoctoral Research Associate Recruitment
This is an exciting international scientific collaboration with teams across 14 universities, 5 countries and 3 continents with their expertise spanning neuroscience, psychology and philosophy.
The Postdoctoral Research Associate will work under the supervision of PI Jorge Morales in conjunction with Co-PI Megan Peters (University of California, Irvine) and their teams, to design, implement, and interpret one of the experiments that are part of the adversarial collaboration. This experiment is focused on understanding the vividness of perceptual and mental imagery experiences and their behavioral and neural profiles. The whole group will also include researchers at other sites including Boston University, UC Irvine, University College London, Université Libre de Bruxelles and other national and international institutions as well.
The Postdoctoral Research Associate will receive direct mentorship from PI Morales and the other members of the team, and will have opportunities for professional development, mentoring, and attending conferences to present their work. There will also be opportunities for developing theoretical and empirical projects that are of mutual interest outside of this specific adversarial collaboration so that the postdoctoral researcher can complete a solid training and build a competitive dossier for the job market.
Our laboratory is an advocate of Open Science best practices and modern statistical methods, and offers an enriching, collegial environment to further their scientific career while fostering healthy work/life balance.
Qualifications
Required: Must possess a Ph.D. in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Philosophy or similar disciplines at the time of appointment. Candidates should have a record of published work (including preprints). Proficiency in advanced neuroimaging (fMRI preferred) and statistical analyses as well as programing skills is required. Strong analytic skills for designing experiments and for analyzing empirical and theoretical results is required.
Preferred: Familiarity with psychophysical methods, signal detection theory and theories of consciousness is a plus but the candidate can learn more during the postdoc. An interest in studying mental imagery, perception and consciousness from neuroimaging, behavioral, and computational modeling perspectives is preferred.
Compensation
The compensation will be >10% above the NIH guidelines, at ~$70,000-75,000 annual salary (depending on qualifications and experience) and it includes benefits (e.g., medical insurance, generous University contributions to retirement plan) and a modest research fund for professional development. The initial appointment is for 1 year with potential for annual reappointments for up to 2 more years (3 years total).
Application
You can formally apply here. Please send Jorge an email (j.morales@northeastern.edu) along with your CV and a rationale for why you want to work in our lab. Please add ARC-ETHOS POSTDOC as the subject line.