We are looking for a talented and motivated postdoctoral researcher in developmental psychology/neuroscience and autism to work on an international project on early child development. The researcher will be joining a multi-institution project funded by the Medical Research Council UK, led by the University of Reading. Partner institutions on this project include the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, Liverpool, Birkbeck, Keele, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Sangath NGO, and Malawi College of Medicine.

The aim of this project is to develop, test, and refine a mobile platform (i.e. app) that incorporates measures of key domains of human behaviour (e.g. cognition, social-emotional behaviour) in 0-6-year-old children. This platform would be used in low-resource settings in India and Malawi to collect normative data from a large sample of children, to eventually help identify children who might have neurodevelopmental/mental health issues. The postholder is expected to contribute to the design and piloting of the mobile platform, as well as analyse data collected by the platform to be reported in conferences and peer-reviewed publications. The appointed individual will receive strong mentoring from well-established scholars as part of this project and be supported in developing new ideas. 

The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS) is pleased to announce a new call for applications to its seed grant fund. Full details (and forms for the required letter of intent) can be found on the Institute website.

 The seed fund is intended to fund activities in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (broadly construed) that are likely to lead to applications for external funding, or which otherwise contribute to the mission of the Institute. Successful applications will typically involve collaborations that require expertise across laboratories and traditional disciplinary boundaries. The Institute does not usually fund research that might normally be considered to fall within the scope of a single lab or discipline.

Applications for small grants (<$10,000) can be submitted at any time; applications in excess of $10,000 should be submitted by October 1st. 

Please submit letters of intent as soon as possible, and at least 2 weeks prior to the seed grant application deadline, to allow time for review and feedback.

The Institute also invites applications for affiliate memberships.

The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Marjorie Solomon, Professor and the Oates Family Endowed Chair in Lifespan Development in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the MIND Institute at UC Davis

Friday, September 20th, 4pm, Oak 117

Dr. Solomon will provide a talk entitled “Executive Control in Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms”

Abstract: Many individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit executive control deficits, meaning that they fail to maintain appropriate task context representations so they can inhibit impulsive responding, behave flexibly, and thereby effectively pursue their goals. Although individuals with typical development are thought to experience significant maturation of executive control processes during adolescence, those with ASD are thought to exhibit executive control impairments that persist into adolescence and young adulthood and are associated with clinically significant difficulties in social and adaptive functioning, and attention deficit, internalizing, and ASD symptoms. Given the challenges inherent in the transition to adulthood, it is critical to better understand the precise nature and development of executive control deficits in those with ASD, and their associations with behavior. This talk will briefly review behavioral and neuroimaging studies of executive control in ASD, and present new neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results from the first wave of a large longitudinal cohort sequential study of individuals with ASD and typical development ages 12-22 years. We seek to clarify the neural signatures of executive control deficits in those with ASD and to investigate how the development of executive control impacts the transition to adulthood in these individuals.

If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Solomon during the day, and/or coming to dinner Friday night, please contact Dr. Naigles: letitia.naigles@uconn.edu