PhD position, University of Birmingham: Identifying the Role of Conscious Perception, a Neuroimaging and Computational Investigation

 

Howard Bowman and Damian Cruse, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham are seeking applications for this PhD project, which is competition-funded under the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (supported by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council). The deadline for applications is Friday, January 20, 2023; a percentage of the available scholarships can be allocated to non-UK students. Informal enquires can be made to H.Bowman@kent.ac.uk.

 

The question of what conscious perception is for remains a key issue for science.  In fact, a substantial part of the scientific study of consciousness has focused on showing how sophisticated subconscious processing can be, seemingly leaving little room for a “special” purpose for conscious experience.

 

We have recently presented evidence that the subconscious brain is limited in its capacity to represent episodic information (Avilés, Bowman & Wyble, 2020; Bowman & Avilés, In Press; Bowman et al, 2014).  We now have extensive behavioural evidence for this hypothesis. We are thus at a perfect stage to 1) characterise the neural correlates (with fMRI, MEG or EEG) that support this formation of episodic memories, and 2) explain these findings with the Simultaneous Type/ Serial Token (STST) model (Bowman & Wyble, 2007), a neural network model of temporal attention. We are proposing a PhD to work on one or both of these topics.

 

More details can be found at,

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/mibtp/pgstudy/phd_opportunities/neurosciencebehaviour2023/neuroimagingand

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/mibtp/

 

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Professor Howard Bowman (PhD)

Professor of Cognition & Logic in Computing at Uni Kent, and

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in Psychology at Uni Birmingham

(honorary at Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London)

 

Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems and the School of Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, UK

email: H.Bowman@kent.ac.uk

WWW: http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/hb5/

 

School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK