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[Van Lutterveld, Remko]

Job opening for Postdoctoral Researcher - cognition, mental states, neuroscience and real-time neurofeedback. Center for Mindfulness, UMass Medical School, MA USA
If you love discovering how brain mechanisms, subjective experience of cognitive states, and technology fit together, you've come to the right place. The Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical has an opening for a postdoctoral researcher to conduct EEG research aimed at furthering our scientific understanding of specific cognitive states related to habit formation and other afflictive states, and the extent to which real time neurofeedback can track and help people change them (e.g. augment mindfulness training). We are studying questions such as: "What are the neural correlates of 'getting caught up' in a habit or addictive thinking pattern?" "What are the behavioral mechanisms underlying stress and emotional eating, and how can we target these for therapeutic benefit?" "How can we best utilize digital delivery of treatment (e.g. app-based training) to help people overcome bad habits and addictions?"
For a sample of some of the work we do, watch Anderson Cooper's brain change in real time in a video from CBS' 60 Minutes<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anderson-cooper-plugs-in-to-mindfulness/> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxIBQT7F54) or a short (12 minute) Al Jazeera documentary<http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/thecure/2016/06/breaking-bad-habits-mindful-addiction-recovery-160606134715200.html> on our work with craving and habit change (http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/thecure/2016/06/breaking-bad-habits-mindful-addiction-recovery-160606134715200.html).
This is an exciting opportunity to participate in several neuroimaging projects, including real-time source-estimated EEG neurofeedback in conjunction with fMRI. We have recently identified biologically plausible brain targets of meditation (e.g. Brewer et al PNAS 2011, Garrison Neuroimage 2013 etc.), have linked specific brain regions to cognitive states such as 'getting caught up' in one's experience (Brewer et al Frontiers 2013), and are currently running several NIH-funded trials to examine whether neurofeedback from specific brain regions can augment mindfulness acquisition in "healthy" as well as clinical populations. Ongoing neuroimaging projects include the effectiveness of mindfulness-based apps to battle addiction, investigating neuronal correlates of different states of meditation, and testing the efficacy of neurofeedback to help patients with schizophrenia learn mindfulness to help reduce their symptoms and disease burden.
The successful candidate will contribute to these efforts by providing analysis of current datasets and developing her/his own mentored projects.
The successful candidate should be creative, be able to communicate effectively and flourish as the center of a diverse, interdisciplinary team, and have good writing skills. Experience with  EEG techniques and analysis is important, and an interest in therapeutic applications of meditation and mindfulness training is preferred.
The position will be for up to 3 years (with possible extensions). The qualified candidate could begin work as early as January 1, 2017.
Desired skills and experience

  *   PhD in neuroscience, psychology, biomedical engineering or related field
  *   Experience with EEG application and analysis
  *   Basic programming experience (e.g. Matlab,  C++ etc).
  *   A record of publication and/or conference presentations
Qualified candidates should submit their CV and three references to: Judson Brewer MD PhD, Center for Mindfulness, UMASS Medical School <Judson.Brewer at umassmed.edu>
About the employer
Judson Brewer MD PhD is the Director of Research at the Center for Mindfulness and associate professor in medicine and psychiatry at UMass Medical School. He also is adjunct faculty at Yale University, and a research affiliate at MIT. A psychiatrist and internationally known expert in mindfulness training for addictions, Brewer has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for addictions, including both in-person and app-based treatments (www.goeatrightnow.com<http://www.goeatrightnow.com/>, www.cravingtoquit.com<http://www.cravingtoquit.com/>). He has also studied the underlying neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI, and source-estimated EEG, and is currently translating these findings into clinical use. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, presented to the US President's Office of National Drug Control Policy, trained US Olympic coaches, been featured on 60 minutes, at TED (5,000,000+ views), TEDMED, TEDx, in Time magazine (top 100 new health discoveries of 2013), Forbes, Businessweek, NPR and the BBC among others. His forthcoming book is The Craving Mind: from cigarettes to smartphones to love, why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
The Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School was founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, and now has over 20,000 graduates of its Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program (see http://www.umassmed.edu/cfm/index.aspx<https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.umassmed.edu%2Fcfm%2Findex.aspx> for more details). Now housed in its own building, it has recently expanded to include core research facilities to bring together clinicians and scientists for truly collaborative basic and translational research. For EEG we use a 128-channel BioSemi EEG system and for fMRI a research-dedicated 3.0 T Philips scanner.

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