Job ID: 110734
PhD position in Marseille. Striatal circuits and the exploration/exloitation dilemna
Position: Ph.D. Student
Deadline: 31 October 2023
Employment Start Date: 2 October 2023
Contract Length: 3 years
City: Marseille
Country: France
Institution: INMED/INSERM
Department:
Description:
A 3 years-long PhD position is available in the team “Cortico-Basal Ganglia Circuits and Behavior” at INMED/Marseille to study the role of the striatum in the exploration/exploitation dilemma, starting this fall 2023.
The project takes advantage of a locomotion-based naturalistic foraging task in freely moving rats combined with manipulations of striatal sub-circuits during behavior (chemo/optogenetics) and in vivo electrophysiology. It is part of an ANR-funded collaboration with David Thura and Bastien Berret to study how effort and time influence decision-making and movements across species.
We’re looking for candidates with a strong interest in animal behavior (rodents) and/or quantitative/theoretical approaches.
For postdoc applicants, having at least one of the following skills is required: rodent behavior, rodent stereotaxic injections, matlab/python analysis of behavioral/neurophysiological signals, hardware control (e.g., familiarity with microcontrollers, LabView programming), signal/image acquisition/processing, computational modeling.
More info on our team and INMED: https://bit.ly/35OL8xm
Marseille is a fun (and relatively inexpensive) city to live in and the institute is located at the entrance of one of the most spectacular natural sites in Europe: The Calanques National Park (great for hiking, rock climbing, and free-water diving/swimming).
Formal application (CV, cover letter, 2 references) or questions to david.robbe@inserm.fr.
Preferred starting dates: between 1st of September and 1st of December 2023. The position will remain open until filled.
Relevant articles:
Jurado-Parras et al., 2020, Current Biology. (link)
Sales-Carbonell et al., 2018, Current Biology (link)
Rueda-Orozco & Robbe, 2015, Nature Neuroscience (link)