January 2020

PhD thesis proposal

Supervisor: Professeur Marcus Missal.

Summary of the project:

Professor Marcus Missal (Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Neuroscience; Cognition and Systems, https://uclouvain.be/en/directories/marcus.missal) is recruiting a student to initiate a PhD research program on the topic of impulsivity in Parkinson’s disease. It has been observed that PD patients often experience trouble in controlling their impulses. This impulse control disorder might be caused by a lack of inhibition or an altered sense of elapsed time. The originality of the approach is to use an oculomotor task to assess impulsivity together with EEG recordings. The student will conduct behavioral and electrophysiological experiences with healthy subjects and PD patients and analyze the data. Paper writing will be done in collaboration with the PhD supervisor.

Requirements:

• A good command of English or French.
• A background education in neuroscience (Master level).
• A good knowledge of statistics (ANOVA, MANOVA, SPSS or R).
• Matlab or Python programming skills (a free training is available during the 1st year of the program).
• A curious and independent mind.
• Financing:

A one year starting grant is provided by the ‘Fondation Louvain’. Thereafter, the candidate will postulate to research funds in Belgium (FRS-FNRS, FRIA) to obtain an additional grant.

Info: marcus.missal@uclouvain.be

 

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December 2019

PhD position at the Institute of Neuroscience of the University of Louvain (Brussels, Belgium)

The Pain Research Lab at the UCLouvain tries to understand the neural mechanisms underlying the perception of pain and its impairments in humans. The lab is looking for a PhD candidate to conduct a research project aimed to investigate the influence of attentional processes on the development of central sensitization to painful stimuli using behavioral and physiological measures (see abstract below). The project will be supervised by Valéry Legrain.

The project is funded by the F.R.S.-FNRS, the fund for Scientific Research of French-speaking Belgium, covering the salary of the enrolled PhD candidate for 4 years and his/her functioning budget. Position should start between 1st of January and 1st July 2020.

The candidate should hold at the starting of the position a Master degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline such as Experimental Psychology, Neuropsychology, Neuroscience, Biomedical & Health Sciences. The candidate should have experience in designing experiments, collecting, analyzing and communicating data. He/she should have good communication skills in English (despite the French language is the official language of the institution, its mastering is not mandatory). Experience in programming is an added value (e.g. Matlab or equivalent).

The candidate should submit (1) a detailed CV summarizing experience, background, and communication outputs if available, (2) a summary of research interests, and (3) recommendation letters from at least two references. Please send the required documents as a single pdf file to Prof. Valéry Legrain (valery.legrain@uclouvain.be). There is not specific deadline to apply, applications will be considered until the position is filled.

Summary of the project: Pain is an emergency signal warning the brain about the occurrence of a stimulus having the potential to damage the body. Sensitization is a process that consists in amplifying the response to pain consecutive to the repetition of the noxious stimulation. Sensitization is thought to play a role in the development of chronic pain. On the other side, psychological factors are known to modulate the experience of pain and are also suggested to play a role in the development and the maintenance of chronic pain. It is therefore hypothesized that cognitive factors such as attention could influence the risk of chronic pain by modulating the strength and the extent of sensitization. This project aims at observing in healthy volunteers the impact of attention on a lab model of sensitization of the central nervous system consecutive to repeated experimentally-induced painful electrical stimuli. More precisely, the project aims to manipulate the attention that participants direct to vs. discard from the painful stimuli during their induction and to observe how it modulates secondary hyperalgesia, i.e. the increased sensitivity to mechanical pinprick stimuli applied several tens of minutes later around the sensitized skin area. Manipulating different attentional aspects, it is predicted that voluntarily directing attention towards the sensitized limb will increase the consequences of sensitization. (for more details see here and here).

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January 2019

Recruitment for a PhD in Neuroscience

Overview

The CHU UCL Namur and the Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) of the UCLouvain are looking for a top-class PhD student to run a multidisciplinary research in NeuroScience.

The project aims at quantifying motor function recovery and motor learning in the early phase of stroke by means of robotics, and at correlating recovery and motor learning with functional MRI.

Requirements

The successful candidate will have a strong scientific or medical background and experience with Matlab programming, and/or fMRI, and/or robotics applied to neuroscience/human movements, and/or neuroscience.

Timing

The project will start immediately after the selection of the candidate.

Settings

The project will be run in the Stroke Unit of the CHU UCL Namur (Mont-Godinne), with French-speaking patients. Therefore, if you do NOT speak French fluently, please do NOT apply.

The application will include a full CV; a letter of motivation underlying why the candidate is the best suited for this project; and 2 letters of recommendation.

Contact

Please send your application to:

Pr Yves Vandermeeren, MD, PhD

yves.vandermeeren@uclouvain.be

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March 2019

POST-DOCTORAL POSITION IN NEURAL CONTROL OF MOVEMENT PREPARATION

Project title:

Understanding the contribution of the motor system to action preparation.

Principal investigator and host laboratory:

Julie Duque, Institute of Neuroscience, UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium

A postdoctoral Research Fellow position (24 months) is available in the laboratory of Julie Duque located in Brussels (https://www.coactionslab.com/), at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Université catholique de Louvain. The lab explores a range of questions pertaining to the cognitive neuroscience of human behavior. We conduct experiments to explore the interaction between cognition and action in neurologically healthy and impaired individuals. We use a variety of techniques to characterize the functional role of different parts of the motor pathways including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). We are currently developing a virtual reality system to study movements in simulated worlds.

Project Description:

The candidate will contribute to a project supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). The program combines various methodologies including TMS and EEG in neurologically healthy and impaired individuals in order to identify how the motor system - including the basal ganglia and the cerebellum - contributes to action preparation at the level of both motor choices and the control of overt movements.

Required skills and experience for the position:

Candidatures should be highly motivated and independent scientists, with a competitive CV.

• PhD is required.
• Backgrounds in neurosciences, psychology, engineering and motor science are welcome.
• Expertise in human EEG and/or data modelling is essential.
• Programming skills (Matlab, R, Python, C++) are highly expected.
• Prior experience with TMS is a plus.
• Good English skills (spoken and written) are required.
• Communication and teamwork skills are crucial.

Main responsibilities of the candidate:

• To contribute as a key member of the team through conducting experiments on human subjects.
• To test healthy subjects and patients in behavioral tasks (visually guided movements).
• To use Matlab (or equivalent) to program the behavioral tasks and analyze data.
• To make various EEG recordings, including TMS-evoked potentials, and study their relationship with MEPs elicited by TMS in targeted muscles.
• To work on the analysis and interpretation of the behavioral and neural data.
• To prepare papers and presentations at scientific conferences.
• To continually update knowledge and understanding in the field of action preparation.
• To provide guidance and supervision for student projects and participate to the training of students.

Starting date of the project is June 2019 – Funding is provided for 2 years

For more details about the position, please contact Julie Duque: julie.duque@uclouvain.be.

Candidates should send a CV, a motivation letter and contacts of two referees for recommendation letters.

 

 

January 2019

PhD and Postdoc positions - Human Visual Neuroscience

 

Our lab (UC Louvain, Belgium) has PhD and postdoc position openings on two separate projects.

Project 1. How are visual category representations built from lower level processing? (1 PhD and 1 Postdoc)

In the context of a larger collaboration with KU Leuven (BE; PIs: Bart Boets, Hans Op de Beeck and Johan Wagemans), UC Louvain (BE; PIs: Olivier Collignon, Valérie Goffaux and Bruno Rossion), Stanford University (USA; PI: Antony Norcia) and the Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging (NL; PI: Serge Dumoulin), one PhD and one postdoc position are opened to investigate how the human visual system processes complex and natural images. A growing corpus of evidence indicates that vision emerges from the dynamic and recurrent interactions between low- and high-level visual regions. By means of 3Tesla and 7Tesla neuroimaging, the overarching goal of the project is to investigate the recurrent dynamics in the human ventral visual pathway during the processing of faces, objects and natural scenes.

Appointment. Valérie Goffaux (UC Louvain) will supervise the PhD and postdoc researchers in collaboration with other PI’s of the consortium. Both positions are fulltime and funded for an initial year. The PhD position is renewable for up to 4 years. The postdoctoral position is renewable for up to 3 years. The starting date is flexible from February 2019 on.

Project 2. Contextual modulations at low- and high-level stages of visual processing (1 PhD)

Visual experience is influenced by spatial context. Context modulates the encoding of basic (e.g., luminance, orientation) and higher-order visual cues (e.g. the features of a face). By means of psychophysics and neuroimaging (3Tesla), this project will investigate at the individual observer level the functional relationship between basic and higher-order contextual modulations.

Appointment. Valérie Goffaux (UC Louvain) will supervise the PhD in collaboration with Pieter Moors (KU Leuven).The PhD position is fulltime, funded for an initial year, and renewable for up to 4 years. The starting date is flexible from February 2019 on.

 

Profile

• PhD applicants should have or should soon obtain a Master's degree in neuroscience, psychology, biomedical science, computer science, or related areas.
• Postdoctoral candidates should hold a PhD degree in one of these domains.
• In addition to a genuine interest in human vision and cognitive neuroscience, the ideal candidate has skills in programming (e.g., Matlab) and data analysis, and a high level of written and spoken English.
• Experience with psychophysics and/or neuroimaging research, as well as good computer skills (e.g. Matlab) and advanced statistical knowledge and skills are a plus.
• Further assets are a creative mind, good problem solving skills and a collaborative and collegial attitude.

To apply, please send a brief (max. 1,000 words) personal statement describing your qualifications and research interests, your CV, and the contact information of two references, to valerie.goffaux@uclouvain.be before February 15 2019.

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INTERNE

December 2018

PhD thesis proposal (or junior post-doc position) in clinical neuroscience

“Biochemical characterization of amyloid and tau protein pathologies in the cerebrospinal fluid and plasma”

Overview

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by both amyloid and tau pathologies. The concentrations of these proteins can now be measured in the cerebrospinal fluid. Characterizing the biochemical abnormalities of these proteins using human samples is critically important for better understanding the disease progression, specifically in the preclinical stages. Besides, developing blood-based biomarker able to detect amyloid and/or tau pathologies would allow screening the elderly population at large, before the onset of cognitive impairment. New techniques, such as mass spectrometry or SIMOA, have the potential to describe the sites of phosphorylation of the tau protein and to detect the presence of amyloid (and tau) in the plasma. We are currently developing these cutting-edge techniques at the Louvain Aging Brain lab and we are setting up collaborations to validate these new in-vivo biomarkers against human post-mortem samples. We are providing access to a large database of frozen samples and are acquiring an average of sixty samples a year from patients having a variety of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. Clinical and imaging data are available for most of the patients, to conduct clinico-pathological studies.

Setting

Université Catholique de Louvain, Avenue Mounier, 1200 Brussels, Belgium.

The Louvain Aging Lab (LAB): Prof. B. Hanseeuw, Institute of Neuroscience (IoNS) includes three PIs, three PhD students, and eight master students.

In collaboration with:

The Neurochemistry Unit: Prof. V. van Pesch, IoNS

The MassProt and PHOS Units: Prof. M. Rider, De Duve Institute

Timing

The candidate is expected to start working between January and September 2019, after enrolment in the local Neuroscience PhD program.

Requirements

Candidates must have a master degree in medicine, pharmacy, biology, or chemistry. Strong laboratory skills and interest for neurodegenerative disorders are required. The candidate should be fluent in English and/or French. Junior post-docs having experience with mass spectrometry or SIMOA are also encouraged to apply.

For candidates with no previous research experience, excellent academic grades are required. Support letters from previous supervisors are welcome.

Funding

Support from the Clinical Research Fund of UCLouvain is available to fund the thesis during an initial period of 2 years. During this period, the candidate will apply for a FRIA or FNRS PhD grant for further support until thesis completion (http://www.fnrs.be/en/index.php/calls-regulations; total: 4 years). Approximate stipend: 1700€/month (this estimate could vary with family situation, age, degrees). Financial support for commuting to the University will be provided. Funding will be re-evaluated every year according to achievements, in collaboration with the PhD supervision committee.

Contact

Bernard.Hanseeuw@uclouvain.be

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Post-doctoral position in neurosciences and protein chemistry

We are looking for a highly motivated scientist to analyze the structure and properties of amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta) oligomers, which are known to play a critical role in the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

The position is available at UCLouvain - Institute of Neuroscience (Brussels) in collaboration with University of Liège - Mass Spectrometry Laboratory.

Primary responsibility of the candidate will include creating the cellular and molecular tools to characterize particular beta-amyloid peptide assemblies that we previously found in our cellular models, and study their pathological properties.

Hence, a thorough background in molecular biology and cellular models is necessary, as well as an expertise in protein chemistry. Previous hands-on laboratory experience in neurobiology and cell imaging would be highly beneficial. Candidates should have a PhD degree (or equivalent) in biology, biomedicine or related field.

The project will be conducted under the supervision of Prof. P. Kienlen-Campard (UCLouvain) and Dr. N. Smargiasso (University of Liège). The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work in both neurobiology and protein chemistry laboratories, in an interdisciplinary -oriented environment. Good communication skills and good working knowledge of English are required.

A grant is available for 1 year with possible extension for a second year. Monthly net salary is of about 2200 euros, according to qualifications and experience.

CV and letters of motivation including 2 references should be addressed to pascal.kienlen-campard@uclouvain.be and nsmargiasso@uliege.be

Deadline for application: March 31^st 2018

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PhD thesis proposal

Short-term memory in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease: a behavioural and electrophysiological approach.

 

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by both motor and non-motor symptoms. Impairment of cognitive functions like memory, attention and time ‘perception’ has important but often underestimated consequences in the everyday life of patients. The PhD candidate will investigate the influence of short-term memory on the temporal and spatial preparation of eye movements in idiopathic PD patients. The thesis should lead to the proposal of a simple and reliable oculomotor assessment of short-term memory in idiopathic PD patients that could be used to estimate cognitive decline and evaluate treatments. Furthermore, analysis of EEG data (in the temporal and frequency domains) together with eye movements should lead to the formulation of quantitative hypotheses about the underlying neural processes. Analyses will be performed in patients at different stages of progression of the disease and with different anti-parkinsonian treatments.

Significance of research

Cognitive decline has a major impact in PD patients and in the aging population in general with a significant cost for families and the society. Most of the time, cognitive decline is evaluated using questionnaires and psychological testing. These methods rely on introspection, require good language skills and are often approximate. We suggest that an oculomotor approach based on implicit methods could yield significantly better estimates of early cognitive decline, at a reasonable cost, and help better understand underlying neural dysfunctions.

Funding

Support by private donators through the Louvain Foundation is available to fund the thesis during an initial period of 2 years. During this period, the candidate will apply for a FRIA or FNRS PhD grant for further support until thesis completion (http://www.fnrs.be/en/index.php/calls-regulations; total: 4 years). Approximate stipend: 1700 euros/month (this estimate could vary according to family situation, age and education). Funding will be re-evaluated every year according to achievements, in collaboration with the PhD supervision committee.

Varia

Location: Institute of Neurosciences (IONS), Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium. Financial support for commuting between the private domicile and the University will be provided. All equipment currently available in the Lab to perform the project (https://www.uclouvain.be/en-425366.html#Team). EEG analysis will be realized in collaboration with Prof. A. Mouraux (same institute). Patients will be selected from the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc (on the same campus) in collaboration with Dr. Anne Jeanjean. Age and sex-matched controls should be recruited amongst the people accompanying patients or locally. The candidate is expected to start working in April – March 2017, with some flexibility, after enrolment in the local Neuroscience PhD program.

 

Requirements:

1. Master in Sciences, Biomedical Sciences, Applied Sciences, Psychology, or equivalent.
2. Excellent academic grades (> 80 %).
3. Training in systems, cognitive neurosciences or equivalent.
4. Training in statistics (ANOVA). Knowledge of SPSS will be appreciated.
5. A very good command of English.
6. Training in MATLAB.
7. Support letters are welcome.
8. Team spirit.

 

Provisional timeline:

Year 1: Preparation of documents for approval of experiences by the local Ethics committee. Preliminary testing of the experimental protocol on a small sample of patients and/or matched control subjects. Preparation of the material for a short review paper on the topic of short-term memory in PD patients.

Year 2: Data collection of oculomotor and EEG data. Programming of data analysis. Submission of the review paper to an international journal with peer-reviewing.

Year 3: Analysis and preparation of the publication of experimental results. A minimum of 2 additional experimental papers in international journals with peer-reviewing is expected. Impact factor is not a central question, but we expect it to be > 3.

Year 4: PhD thesis writing and defense; preparation of further experiments.

 

EXTERNE

 

Post-Doc position at Institut du Fer à Moulin, Paris

A two-year post-doctoral position supported by an ANR grant is available at the Institut du Fer à Moulin (IFM, http://www.u839.idf.inserm.fr/en/). Located in the 5tharrondissement of Paris, at a walking distance of several other research institutes (Curie Institut, ENS, ESPCI, IBPS-Paris6, ICM,…), the IFM provides an international environment with students and fellows from around the world, and state of the art technology platforms.

The position is available in the group headed by Christine Métin (in Team 4 “Developmental mechanisms of brain disorders”) who carries out researches on the migration of embryonic GABAergic neurons. The successful applicant will work on a research program supported by an ANR grant aimed at analyzing the role of the primary cilium and the Sonic Hedgehog transduction pathway in the migration of cortical interneurons. The research will be performed on mice embryos, using primary cell cultures, cultures of organotypic slices, and in utero electroporation. Live cell imaging techniques will be used to analyze cell migration.

Applicants should be highly motivated candidates, with a solid background in molecular and developmental neurosciences and strong interest in cell biology and cell imaging techniques.Basic knowledge in molecular biology and histology is required.Aknowledge oflive cell imaging techniques will be appreciated. Applicants should be able to perform experimentalresearch in an independent way and to closely interact with members of the team. Previous post-doctoral experience is not mandatory.

Candidates should contact Christine Métin by mail (christine.metin@inserm.fr) and send a CV with past research experiences, publication record, as well as a letter detailing motivation and interest in our work. Applicants should also provide the name and contact coordinates of two or three references.