Applications are invited for a fully-funded, 4-year PhD position in the Kelly lab in University College Dublin, to work on a project examining the task-adaptive role of evidence accumulation in perceptual decision making using human neurophysiology combined with computational modelling. This project is funded under a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, by the SFI-HRB-Wellcome Research Partnership.

The extent to which evidence accumulation underpins decision formation in some or all perceptual tasks is still widely debated. Accordingly, there now exist many distinct, alternative mathematical decision models that limit the role of evidence accumulation in various ways, most notably through leaky integration or "collapsing" decision bounds. The trouble is, these alternative models can often be made to fit behavioral data equally well but lead to fundamentally different inferences. With the rapidly growing use of these models across many basic and clinical research domains, it is past time that we knew whether, why and how these alternative mechanisms are invoked across different task scenarios, including ones representative of real life. This project will draw on novel neurally-informed modelling approaches developed by our lab (see, e.g. [1-3]) and others, to uncover core principles governing how neurocomputational decision processes are flexibly adapted to diverse task demands.

The Kelly lab is based in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in University College Dublin, Ireland, and is affiliated with the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. It has strong collaborative links to basic and clinical cognitive neuroscience research groups employing a range of methods, both locally and internationally. The successful candidate will have ample opportunities for wider collaborations and the learning of new skills.

Interested candidates should submit their CV and a brief research statement describing their background and research interests and how they align with the project and the broader interests of the Kelly lab, to simon.kelly@ucd.ie. The PhD position is intended to start in Sept 2021, with some flexibility.

[1] Afacan-Seref K, Steinemann NA, Blangero A, Kelly SP. Dynamic interplay of value and sensory information in high-speed decision making. Current Biology. 2018. 28(5):795-802.e6.
[2] Kelly SP, Corbett EA, O'Connell RG. Neurocomputational mechanisms of prior-informed perceptual decision making in humans. Nature Human Behaviour. In Press.
[3] O'Connell RG, Shadlen MN, Wong-Lin K, Kelly SP. Bridging Neural and Computational Viewpoints on Perceptual Decision-Making. Trends Neurosci. 2018;41(11):838‐852. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2018.06.005

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Simon Kelly, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University College Dublin
t: +353 (1) 716 1803
e: simon.kelly@ucd.ie
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