Fully Funded PhD Scholarship in Psychology: Fear learning, extinction and consolidation processes in the transition from adolescence to adulthood and early life stress

This is one of many projects in competition for the current funding opportunities available within the Department of Psychology

Primary supervisor: Dr Liat Levita

Project description:  Aims: 1) To investigate the sexually dimorphic effect of early life adversity (ELA) on anxiety, fear-learning, and avoidance behaviour in adulthood. 2) Access risk-taking and anxiety behaviour in adults with and without history of ELA. Tools: behavioural and brain imaging (EEG) methodologies. Some background: Both the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex play a critical role in fear learning and extinction processes, respectively. Notably, these systems are underdeveloped during adolescence. Consistent with this immature functional connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala in adolescents has previously been shown in tasks of emotion regulation, as well as in age-dependent differences in fear learning and extinction (Jovanovic et al., 2013). However to date no studies have examined age-dependent differences in immediate extinction processes throughout development. Moreover, previous work in our lab (Levita et al, 2014) has demonstrated that potentiation of the N170 to danger signals in an avoidance task, and that this potentiation was greater in adolescents compared to adults, we would like now to understand the mechanisms that underlie this difference, and also to investigate the effect of gender and early life stress on the degree of potentiation of an early visual sensory percept to danger signals in different age groups.

Start date: 1 October 2016

Requirements:  Applicants must have, or expect to obtain, a minimum of a first class or high upper second-class honours degree in psychology or a related discipline. In general awards are usually made to applicants with first class undergraduate degrees and/or at least a merit at masters level.

For further details and the application process please visit:

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/prospectivepg/funding

Closing date for applications is 5pm Tuesday, 2 February 2016