Job Offer: PhD position within the Department of Psychology, University Jaume I, Castelló, Spain

/ hace 34 segundos 23 julio, 2026

Os enviamos información sobre una oferta de contrato de PhD en el Departamento de Psicología de la Universidad Jaume I en Castelló, España.

La Junta Directiva de la SEPEX

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Applications are invited for a fully funded four-year PhD position. The position is expected to start in January 2027.

Research environment
The PhD will take place at the Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging research group, University Jaume I, Castelló, Spain (https://sites.google.com/view/nnfuji/home). They will join a vibrant community of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, and neuroimaging researchers that form a supportive environment and training opportunities in neuroimaging
clinical and healthy populations.


Supervision
The main supervisor of this project will be Dr. Maya Visser. She has worked on several projects at international research centres in the Netherlands, UK and Spain (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6302-0672). The PhD student will receive training plans and specialized courses to support their research career. He/she is anticipated to publish several articles and attend national and
international conferences to present the research outcomes.


Project
This PhD project aims to investigate brain-behaviour systems associated with self-referential and social processing in both healthy participants and individuals with mental health problems.
Social conceptual processing is essential in everyday life, enabling us to interpret social cues (e.g., gestures), understand complex social hierarchies and moral codes. Affect and motivation influence social processing by mediating which social concepts become salient in a given context. In individuals with anxiety disorders, affective alterations bias attention toward threatening or negative information which influences how social situations are interpreted.
The project will examine how large-scale brain networks involved in social semantic cognition, self-referential processing, emotion, and neuromodulation interact during social cognition, and how these interactions are altered in anxiety. The work will combine advanced functional MRI analyses, including multivariate approaches and network-based methods, to better understand
the neural basis of maladaptive social cognition.


Eligibility & payment
Applicants should hold a Master’s degree in Neuroscience or a related field with an excellent academic record. They should have a strong interest in functional MRI methods, including multivariate analyses, and programming experience is desirable. Candidates should be interested in basic neuroscience with clinical applications, have a good command of English, and be
willing to learn Spanish. The position is a full-time, four-year PhD contract with full social security benefits and a salary in accordance with Spanish predoctoral funding regulations.


To apply
For further informal enquiries about the project and to apply for this position please contact Dr. Maya Visser (visser@uji.es). Applications should include:
– Letter of motivation (paragraph): Describe your previous research experience and explain why you are interested in this position
– CV


Literature of interest
– Binney, R., & Ramsey, R. (2020). Social Semantics: The role of conceptual knowledge and cognitive control in a neurobiological model of the social brain. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 112(May), 28–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2020.01.030
– Camacho, M. C., Deshpande, E., & Perino, M. T. (2025). The Cognitive–Affective Social Processing and Emotion Regulation (CASPER) model. Neuropsychopharmacology 2025 51:1, 51(1), 136–152. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02224-x
– Eslinger, P. J., Anders, S., Ballarini, T., Boutros, S., Krach, S., Mayer, A. V., Moll, J., Newton, T.L., Schroeter, M. L., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Raber, J., Sullivan, G. B., Swain, J. E., Lowe, L., & Zahn, R. (2021). The neuroscience of social feelings: mechanisms of adaptive social functioning. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 592–620. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2021.05.028
– González-García, I., & Visser, M. (2023). A Semantic Cognition Contribution to Mood and Anxiety Disorder Pathophysiology. Healthcare 2023, Vol. 11, Page 821, 11(6), 821. https://doi.org/10.3390/HEALTHCARE11060821
– Ibañez Montolio, M., Visser, M., & Zareba, M. R. (2026). Socio-emotional difficulties observed in alexithymia reflect altered interactions of the semantic and monoaminergic neuromodulatory brain networks. Psychophysiology, 63(1). https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.05.23.655721
– Zahn, R. (2025). The psychopathology of mood disorders: implications for identifying neurocognitive intervention targets. Journal of Affective Disorders, 385, 119423. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JAD.2025.119423
– Zareba, M. R., Bielski, K., Costumero, V., & Visser, M. (2024). Graph analysis of guilt processing network highlights links with subclinical anxiety and self-blame. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 19(1), 92. https://doi.org/10.1093/SCAN/NSAE092
– Zareba, M. R., González-García, I., Montolio, M. I., Binney, R. J., Hoffman, P., & Visser, M. (2026). Subclinical anxiety is associated with reduced self-distancing and enhanced self-blamerelated connectivity between anterior temporal and subgenual cingulate cortices. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 146, 111679.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2026.111679

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