Connectionists: PhD project in recurrent neural network models of neural dynamics

[Mark Humphries]

A 4-year fully-funded PhD studentship project with Professor Mark Humphries and Professor Stephen Coombes is available for October 2024 start, through the University of Nottingham's BBSRC Doctoral Training Programme.

The striatum is central to an extraordinary range of disorders, from Parkinson's disease to OCD, but our best models for its function are outdated and contradicted by recent data.  In this project, we will test the hypothesis that the striatum is a special class of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) that use purely inhibitory connections. We will build and analyse this class of networks, deriving predictions for the computations that striatum performs, and for the activity of neuron populations in the striatum. We will then test these predictions in two large-scale datasets of population recordings from striatum in freely-exploring mice from the studies of Klaus et al (Neuron, 2017) and Markowitz et al (Cell, 2018).

The DTP offers 2 lab rotations and wide-ranging training modules. If successful, the PhD student will join the Humphries' lab ( https://www.humphries-lab.org/) and be part of the School of Psychology's extensive postgraduate support network.

Closing date:12 noon (GMT) Friday 12th January 2024.

For full studentship details and how to apply see here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/bbdtp/apply/how-to-apply.aspx



Professor Mark Humphries | Professor of Computational Neuroscience

Lab: humphries-lab.org<https://www.humphries-lab.org/>

Twitter: @markdhumphries

Public blog: https://medium.com/the-spike

Book: "The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds" (Princeton UP) out now in paperback: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691241487/the-spike


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