PhD Position: Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation and Computational Affective Neuroscience

Are you passionate about affective neuroscience computational modelling and transcranial ultrasound stimulation? Come and join our PhD project on approach-avoidance decisions under threat, funded by the ERC Advanced Grant HEART2ADAPT, and work with a dynamic team.

Why do some people remain calm and make flexible decisions under stress, while others freeze or flee? HEART2ADAPT aims to answer this question. We are developing a new model to understand how the body’s autonomic stress state shapes responses to threat and how the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activity supports adaptive decision making in dynamic environments.

Using state-of-the-art methods to track brain and bodily signals in real time – such as heart rate, posture and advanced neuroimaging – we will investigate how stress influences decision-making. A key component of this specific PhD project is testing causal mechanisms using transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS), including both offline TUS and the development of MR-compatible online TUS.

Funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, the project HEART2ADAPT offers you the opportunity to contribute to protocol development, data collection and computational modelling of behavioural and neural data. You will apply TUS to key nodes of our model, including the amygdala, ventral striatum and dorsal ACC.

You will work closely with colleagues at the Donders Institute and the Behavioural Science Institute, as well as with international collaborators. Responsibilities may also include mentoring of BSc and MSc students.

Would you like to learn more about what it’s like to pursue a PhD at Radboud University? Visit the page about working as a PhD candidate.