The Social and Cultural Neuroscience Lab (SCN Lab), directed by Dr. Elizabeth Losin, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami invites applications from prospective graduate students for enrollment in the Fall of 2021 (application deadline December 1, 2020).
We use theory and methods from neuroscience (e.g., fMRI), psychology (e.g., psychophysiology), and anthropology (e.g., evolutionary theories) to explore how humans acquire cultural beliefs and practices, how these beliefs and practices shape psychology and brain function, and how both processes impact human health and health care. The main focus of our current work is investigating how sociocultural factors (e.g. doctor-patient relationship, demographics, and language) influence the pain experience and its underlying neural correlates. This work is funded in part by a five-year award from The National Institute of Drug Abuse aimed at using functional MRI and medical simulations to explore psychological and neural mechanisms underlying demographic biases in opioid and non-opioid pain treatment. Our other main line of work focuses on the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying cultural acquisition. We are also open to exploring other research questions exploring the interactions between culture, brain and health. We have an emphasis on increasing the ecological validity of paradigms used to study sociocultural phenomena and using advanced neuroimaging analysis techniques such as machine learning and fMRI based mediation analyses to try and uncover tighter links between brain mechanisms and behaviors of interest. You can find out more about the lab by exploring our lab website: www.losinlab.org.
Funding is available via a Research Assistantship.
If you are interested, please email me your C.V., a scientific writing sample, and a description of your interest in the lab.
More information about our lab and department is available here: http://www.losinlab.org/graduate-recruitment
Information about the application process is available here: http://www.psy.miami.edu/graduate/how-to-apply/