What you will be doing
As a research assistant you will be a critical part of the team, working closely with lab members interested in examining what people and rodents feel in response to the distress of others and what brain mechanisms trigger this feeling and observed physiological responses. Your aim will be to refine our ability to measure what people feel while witnessing the distress of others directly from physiological read-outs rather than verbal reports, and identify which of these measures, or combination thereof, uniquely characterize empathic responses in humans. The read-outs will include facial expressions, pupil dilation, heart rate and its variability, respiration and startle potentiation. You will work closely with another research assistant that will examine similar readouts in rodents witnessing the distress of others to identify the generalisability of these measures.

During your research assistantship you will have the opportunity to:

• learn to use tools to provide fine-grained analyses of facial expressions and behavior
• learn to record electro-cardio and electro-myograms, eye movement and pupil dilation.
• closely collaborate and coordinate with other members of the team in Amsterdam and our collaborators at the university of California at San Diego (UCSD) Sanford center for empathy and compassion
• coauthor your findings in open access scientific journals
• prepare yourself for a competitive PhD program in affective or social neuroscience

What you will be contributing

We are looking for an enthusiastic team-player, who

• has a research master in the field of neuroscience, behavioral psychology or related fields
• enjoys advanced data analyses and statistical inferences
• enjoys learning new techniques
• functions well both in a team as well as independently, and possess good communication skills
• enjoys finalizing projects and writing papers

Fixed-term contract: 6 months.

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

About the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience is the country's leading fundamental neuroscience research institute, in the international and progressive city of Amsterdam. It provides a critical mass of scientists (spanning more than 27 nationalities) and neuroscience facilities, in a highly interactive, dynamic, multi-cultural environment, with English as the working language.

The Social Brain Lab

The Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

This will be your main home, in which your main supervisors, Dr. Valeria Gazzola and Prof. Christian Keysers will be working on a daily base, and where you will work closely with another research assistant, several PhD students and postdocs on related projects. The Social Brain Lab is the results of the joint venture of the research groups of Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola, aiming at shedding light on the neural mechanisms of empathy by combining studies in humans and rodents. The SBL is funded by multiple European (ERC, Marie Curie), Dutch (VENI/VIDI/VICI, Gravitation, XL) and international (Sanford Center for Empathy and Compassion) grants, and is characterized by an unusually diverse environment, with members from all over the world, backgrounds (ranging from philosophy to engineering with an emphasis on biology and psychology), and neuroscientific techniques (spanning from ultra-high field fMRI in humans to single-cell recordings in rodents). The SBL is appreciated for its collaborative, enthusiastic and supportive environment, where people strive to become successful, recognized and appreciated scientists.

Please contact Laura Hammock l.hammock@nin.knaw.nl