Os reenviamos un mensaje sobre una oferta de un contrato predoctoral FPI en la Unidad de Cognición y Plasticidad Cerebral de la Universitat de Barcelona (UB).

La Junta Directiva de la SEPEX

Principal Investigator: Claudia Peñaloza

This is an open call to invite applications for a 4-year full-time PhD fellowship. Successful candidate(s) will be invited to apply to the Spanish FPI fellowship (official call opening in September 2024) to conduct research under the project: COGNATE PROCESSING, LEARNING AND RE-LEARNING IN BILINGUALS WITH APHASIA (PID2023-151781OA-I00: COG-BI-APHASIA) recently funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación/ Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento, 2023).

Project summary: Aphasia is an acquired speech and language disorder that often results from stroke and other neurological conditions. In bilingual persons with aphasia (BWA), their two languages can be affected, resulting in long-term communication impairment, negatively affecting their independence and quality of life. While single word processing deficits are common in BWA, these deficits and their recovery are not well understood since BWA do not often receive therapy in both of their languages. Based on psycholinguistic evidence demonstrating that cognates can show a processing and learning advantage over non-cognates in neurotypical bilinguals, this project aims to examine whether cognates may have a processing, learning, and relearning (treatment) advantage in BWA. This project bridges basic psycholinguistics, clinical neurolinguistics, and aphasia rehabilitation research to examine cognate effects in this clinical population, while identifying factors based on word characteristics as well as individual factors that modulate cognate effects. The resulting knowledge will inform (i) language processing and learning ability in BWA generating methods that may have potential use in clinical practice and (ii) treatment of lexical retrieval deficits in this population.

Requirements: Successful candidates should have a background in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, logopedics or linguistics/ clinical linguistics (or related areas).Knowledge of the Spanish language is required, and a good command of Catalan and English will be valuable. Candidates should be highly motivated to work with patients with language disorders resulting from neurological conditions and have experience in statistical analyses using the R software.

The student will be part of the Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit (CBPU) and will have access to scientific infrastructure, research resources and training activities at the CBPU and the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Barcelona, with the opportunity to join the international Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists.

Contact: Interested candidates should send their CV and a brief statement of interest in this position to the principal investigator at claudia_penaloza@ub.edu before September 5, 2024.