Management and analysis of brain and behavioral data collected in stroke patients

The ideal candidate has a master's degree in Psychology and at least 1 year of research experience in the field of neuroscience or psychology. He/she must have presented his/her research in the form of an abstract or short paper or oral communication at national or international conferences. The ideal candidate has good skills in handling the tools for the analysis of behavioral and MRI data, which will be acquired as part of the RE.PO.R.T. project: "Rehabilitation and Polymorphisms in the Region of Tuscany." He/she must possess good programming skills (preferably MATLAB) and good knowledge of statistics. The ideal candidate is also experienced in database management. He/she must have a thorough knowledge of the scientific literature concerning rehabilitation, stroke, functional neuroanatomy, and neuroimaging techniques. Lastly, he/she must be able to write scientific articles and project reports while working in a supervised manner.

Create and organize a database for collecting neuropsychological and behavioral data from a sample of approximately 300 patients within a longitudinal experimental design. The database should be remotely accessible to the different centers participating in the trial. In addition, the candidate will have to manage the MRI data acquired at the recruiting centers and carry out neuroimaging analyses. In particular, he/she will have to implement a voxel‐based lesion symptom mapping pipeline, which allows to relate a symptom to a specific brain lesion. As such, the candidate will be responsible for lesion mapping, lesion segmentation, volume calculation, and correlation between brain data and neuropsychological tests scores. In addition, he/she will be responsible of the estimation of the relationship between the change in brain volumetry and the outcome of the rehabilitation program. Finally, the candidate should summarize the outcome of his/her research work in presentations and written reports.

12 months, renewable 

€ 15.000,00 (for each position)

"RE.PO.R.T.", codice P0186, CUP: C94I18003080002;

This research project is funded by Tuscany Region (Bando ricerca salute 2018).