PhD student in Psychology, memory integration

Lund University was founded in 1666 and is repeatedly ranked among the world’s top 100 universities. The University has 40 000 students and 7 600 staff based in Lund, Helsingborg and Malmö. We are united in our efforts to understand, explain and improve our world and the human condition.


The Faculty of Social Sciences at Lund University is one of the leading education and research institutions in Sweden and operates both in Lund and Helsingborg.

The Department of Psychology combines education with research and has in recent years been very successful in the competition for external research funds. Central research areas include occupational and organizational psychology, clinical psychology, cognition, neuropsychology, personality and social psychology and developmental psychology.

Many of our courses are developed in connection with research projects, and students are given the opportunity to gain access to current research findings from teachers who themselves are active researchers in their respective areas. Our education environment has long been highly internationalized.



Research project
The Department of Psychology invites applications for a doctoral student within the research project “When remembering affects new learning: Temporal dynamics of memory integration revealed by EEG and machine learning techniques” (Principal Investigator: Dr.

Inês Bramão).

Episodic memory enables us to revisit the past to inform and shape current thinking and behaviour. Retrieval cues in the present bring to mind past episodes by triggering the reactivation of stored memories. Recent influential work in cognitive neuroscience has shown that reactivated memories influence the encoding of new episodes, allowing us to integrate overlapping events. However, the neural mechanisms mediating such memory integration and its behavioural implications remain to be specified.

The overarching goal of this research project is to shed light on the boundary conditions for memory integration. The current project will capitalize on recent advances in machine learning and employ multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of high-temporal resolution electroencephalographic (EEG) data to measure memory reactivation as it unfolds during new learning, and to give insight into the temporal dynamics of memory integration.

PhD Project
The doctoral project is part of the research project described above; therefore, its final design is to be decided together with the project leaders. Nevertheless, the doctoral student will have great opportunities to influence the final design of the studies. In the final part of the doctoral studies, the doctoral student is expected to independently develop his/her own research ideas. The applicant is to submit a research plan where potential research ideas and possible studies, within current episodic memory research, are presented.

The PhD student is expected to take an active role in all stages of the research project. The PhD student will be responsible for stimuli material preparation, designing and programing experiments, collecting and analysing behavioural and EEG data, and for reporting and presenting the research results.

The doctoral project will be conducted within the Lund Memory Lab and it will be carried out in collaboration with other participants in the research team. The team has expertise with high temporal resolution techniques and its research approach combines behavioural testing with EEG and eye tracking measures. The Lund Memory Lab is led by Prof. Mikael Johansson and produces research with international impact at the forefront of current episodic memory research. The PhD project will be supervised by Dr. Inês Bramão and Prof. Mikael Johansson.

Work duties
The PhD programme in psychology comprises 240 credits, which corresponds to four years of full-time study. The programme concludes with the doctoral student defending their PhD thesis at a public defence. Those appointed to doctoral studentships shall devote themselves to their research studies. Provisions on the employment of doctoral students are provided in the Higher Education Ordinance, Chapter 5, Sections 1-7. The doctoral student is expected to actively participate in the research and teaching environment at the department as well as to perform teaching duties, up to no more than 20 per cent of a full-time post. Information on research studies in psychology can be found at http://www.psy.lu.se/studera/forskarutbildning (in Swedish).

For full information about eligibility and how to apply please visit https://lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:310071/

Terms of employment
Fixed-term employment, four years, in accordance with the Higher Education Ordinance, Chapter 5 Section 7. 

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