In order to fill a fixed-term position in full-time (39.83 hours/week = 100%) at the earliest possible date, we are looking for 1

Postdoctoral researcher in Neuropixels recordings, predictive processing, and navigation

The Department of Cognitive Neurobiology led by Caspar M. Schwiedrzik is seeking an outstanding postdoctoral researcher to establish and lead a new research program using Neuropixels recordings in behaving mice to study predictive processing at the interface of vision, space, and navigation. We will investigate how the brain learns regularities in structured environments and uses them to generate predictions about upcoming events. The successful candidate will develop experiments in which mice navigate controlled environments while encountering visual objects or events with learnable statistical structure. The goal is to understand how neural populations represent expectations, prediction errors, and the interaction between visual and spatial information during navigation. This new research program will be part of the lab’s broader cross-species research program on predictive processing and experience-dependent plasticity. Related experiments are conducted in the lab in non-human primates and humans, using electrophysiology, fMRI, (intracranial) EEG, and behavioral approaches. The position therefore offers the opportunity to develop mechanistic experiments in rodents while contributing to an integrated research program within the lab across species, methods, and spatial scales.

The lab seeks to understand the cortical basis and computational principles of perception and experience-dependent plasticity in the brain. See https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.11.30.691163, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51543-y, and https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.17.694881 for recent examples of our work. The postdoc will play a key role in expanding these efforts toward high-density electrophysiology in behaving mice. Experiments will take place at the new research building THINK – Center for Theoretical and Integrative Neuroscience and Cognitive Science at Ruhr University Bochum (https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/think/index.html.en). THINK provides a highly interdisciplinary environment for integrative neuroscience and cognitive science, with dedicated infrastructure for human and animal research, neuroimaging, behavioral experimentation, data analysis, and high-performance computing. The postdoc will join a growing team in the lab, including researchers working on electrophysiology, fMRI, and behavior in mice. The position is funded through the Research Center One Health Ruhr of the University Alliance Ruhr. One Health Ruhr brings together researchers from neuroscience, molecular biology, water research, cancer research, and related fields to study fundamental mechanisms of health and disease across biological and environmental scales.

Scope: full-time
Duration: fixed-term, 3 years with the option to extend
Start: at the earliest possible date
Apply by: 2026-08-17

Your tasks:

- Establish Neuropixels recordings in awake, behaving mice
- Design and implement experimental paradigms to study interactions between visual object processing, spatial context, and statistical learning
- Perform and optimize animal training, surgical preparation, electrophysiological recordings, and behavioral data acquisition
- Analyze large-scale neural population recordings using modern computational and statistical approaches to investigate neural signatures of expectation, prediction error, sequence learning, and context-dependent processing across relevant cortical and hippocampal circuits
- Visualize, interpret, and present results at lab meetings, conferences, and scientific workshops
- Prepare manuscripts for peer-reviewed scientific journals
- Develop independent research ideas and contribute to future grant proposals
- Contribute to supervision and mentoring of PhD students, master’s students, and research assistants

Your profile:

- PhD in neuroscience, biology, cognitive science, biomedical engineering, or a related field
- Prior experience with in vivo rodent electrophysiology is essential; experience with Neuropixels recordings in behaving animals is highly desirable
- Applications from candidates who are excited to help establish a new research program are particularly welcome
- Strong programming (e.g., Python or MATLAB) and data-analysis skills, in particular with large-scale neural population analyses, dimensionality reduction, or encoding/decoding models is desirable
- Interest in predictive processing, statistical learning, spatial navigation, visual processing, or hippocampal-cortical interactions
- Experience with stereotaxic surgery, chronic implants, histology, and/or animal training is highly desirable
- Familiarity with animal welfare regulations and relevant training certificates for animal experimentation (FELASA), or willingness to obtain the required certification, is expected
- Fluency in spoken and written English (a good command of English is a requirement, fluency in German is beneficial but not a requirement). The working language in the group is English.

[https://jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/a6646cd83e1d4ed7e6d72b4ead787ec28f531ce90?ref=AfA](https://jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/a6646cd83e1d4ed7e6d72b4ead787ec28f531ce90?ref=AfA)