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3 PhD positions

AG Busse - Division of Neurobiology, Department of Biology II at the LMU Munich

26.04.2017

3 PhD positions as part of interdisciplinary collaborations are available in Laura Busse’s group at the Department of Biology II of the LMU Munich. We study the neural circuits of visual perception in awake, behaving mice, where we combine electrophysiological recordings using silicon probes with genetic tools for circuit manipulation.

The first position is part of the DFG-funded Research Training Group Perception in context and its neural basis, and will be supervised jointly by Laura Busse and Thomas Wachtler (LMU). The project combines questions from neurobiology and computational neuroscience. It will investigate contextual modulations of neuronal representations and perception by stimulus and reward history. The successful candidate will train mice in a visual perceptual task, quantifying history effects in behavior and neural responses during task performance, assess the impact of history effects on neuronal coding and decoding using computational modeling, and probe with optogenetics the role of top-down neural circuits for history-dependent contextual modulations. The project requires a strong interest in animal behavior and neurophysiology, as well as computational modeling. Programming skills are necessary.

The second position is part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center Robust vision: Inference Principles and neural mechanisms. In collaboration with Philipp Berens (data analysis, University of Tübingen) and Thomas Euler (retinal imaging, University of Tübingen), the project builds upon Baden et al. (2016) Nature, and will investigate transformations of representations between the retina and the dorsolateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of the thalamus. The project will include opportunities for in vitro two-photon Calcium imaging of the retina (in the Euler lab), in vivo extracellular recordings in mouse dLGN, and optogenetic manipulations of cortico-thalamic feedback. The project requires strong experimental skills, a strong interest in computation, and the ability to work in a distributed team. A second, complementary PhD position based primarily in Tübingen will have a computational focus and will perform advanced data analysis and modeling of the experimental findings.

The third position is also part of the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center Robust vision: Inference Principles and neural mechanisms. In collaboration with Thomas Euler (retinal imaging, University of Tübingen) and Frank Schaeffel (Neurobiology of the eye, University of Tübingen), we will explore the visual input received by the mouse visual system under natural conditions and how such input is processed along key stages of the early visual system. The project will include opportunities for performing recordings of the visual input encountered by mice under naturalistic conditions, statistical analysis of the recorded video material, and measurements of neural responses from mouse primary visual cortex in response to naturalistic movies. The project requires strong experimental skills, an interest in engineering and programming, and the ability to work in a distributed team. A complementary PhD position based primarily in Tübingen will closely collaborate on the development of the recording hardware and software, and focus on retinal aspects of the project.

For further details, please contact Prof. Dr. Laura Busse.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Laura Busse
Department Biology II, Division Neurobiology
LMU Munich
Großhadernerstr. 2
82152 Planegg-Martinsried
Tel.: +49 (0) 89 218074305
busse@bio.lmu.de