Postdoctoral position in neural mechanisms of speech perception

An immediate full-time postdoctoral position is available in the laboratory of Dr. Nima Mesgarani to study speech processing in human auditory cortex. We use a combination of techniques including ECoG in implanted epilepsy patients, fMRI/EEG, and computational modeling to investigate the neural mechanisms behind our ability to perceive speech, particularly in challenging and difficult conditions. Our goal is to understand how speech signal is represented in the brain, how attention changes the representation, and what computations are performed throughout the auditory system. A background in auditory neurophysiology, experience with designing cognitive tasks, facility with Matlab, and flexibility to work with a multidisciplinary, multicenter team would be helpful. The laboratory is part of a large neuroscience research community at Columbia University, including Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Grossman Center for Statistics of Mind, Mind Brain Behavior Institute, and Center for Neural Engineering. Interested applicants should send a CV (including references) and two representative papers (or abstracts) to nima@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

References:

Mesgarani et. al., Phonetic feature encoding in human superior temporal gyrus, Science 2014

Mesgarani et. al., Mechanisms of noise robust representation of speech in primary auditory cortex, PNAS 2014