Research Associate in Neuroscience of Sleep and Trauma

We are seeking a Research Associate to work on an MRC funded project to research the role of sleep in processing traumatic experiences and how this may lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Emotional processing is thought to rely on a complex interplay between limbic-cortical areas of the brain including the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. Sleep is known to play an important role in this processing, where the coordination of network oscillations including ripples, spindles, and slow-waves, optimise limbic-cortical dialogue and tune the integration of memory into long term storage. Cell assemblies, groups of neurons that temporally and functionally organise to encode information, that are active during learning, reactivate during these network oscillations of sleep. Replay of hippocampal place cell sequences during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) supports consolidation of spatial memories. In contrast, there is signific...