The capacity to concentrate for long period of times is critical both for students and some specific position (air traffic controller, monitor security guard, child care teacher or even Paris taxi driver). Failure to do so can result in life-threatening accident. Monks of various traditions, practicing concentrative meditation, excel at developing a one point focus attention. Over the 3-year course of this project, we intend to 1) record the brain activity of monks in meditation using EEG. 2) train normal non-meditative subjects to produce the same brain rhythms as the monk do. 3) test the concentrative capacities of these subjects before and after training. The institution hosting the project is the University of Toulouse III and the CNRS laboratory CERCO. The CERCO (Center for Brain and Cognition Research) is an internationally recognized laboratory of 18 professional independent CNRS researchers. In 2006 4-year evaluation, this laboratory was ranked first in Neuroscience in France. It is well known for its multidisciplinary approach to cognitive neuroscience with experiments on mice, monkeys and humans, and a wide range of imaging methodologies including modeling.
The ideal candidate will have:
- a master degree or equivalent in the cognitive or computational domain (no constraint in terms of nationality)
- an interest for studying the brain and altered states of consciousness such as those induced by neurofeedback or meditation
- a training in mathematics, signal processing and/or computer science
- fluency in English. Working knowledge in French is preferred.
- capacity to work independently
- age limit: 25 (or 30 under special circumstances)
Contact: Arnaud Delorme via email before the 31 of August 2008 (arno@cerco.ups- tlse.fr) (include PDF of a motivation letter, a CV, any publication in english/french and have 2 references send recommendation letter independently by email).
http://cerco. ups-tlse. fr/~delorme
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