PhD Studentship: Embodied face perception of affective social interactions in social anxiety

Project Title: Embodied face perception of affective social interactions in social anxiety

Funding amount: £17,668 maintenance grant per annum

Lead Supervisor name: Dr Xun He

Social anxiety is a mental disorder with a high prevalence. About 7.1% of the adult population is diagnosed with this condition, and 12.1% of population experienced this condition in their lifetime. The project will provide a biomarker for social anxiety assessment by investigating face perception in social VR settings and recording brain activity with EEG measures.

Face perception is crucial for successful daily social interactions. Current theories suggest that early perception of faces only processes the structure of faces. However, recent findings showed that social contexts and emotions influenced the electric brain activity (i.e., EEG) of early face perception, leading to the embodied face perception notion that social interactions and associated affective states are also processed during early face perception. It is hypothesized that social anxiety, a mental disorder characterized by sentiments of fear and anxiety in social situations, potentially modulates the embodied face perception. The current project will investigate this by employing an integrated mobile EEG and virtual reality (VR) approach.

What does the funded studentship include?

Funded candidates will receive a maintenance grant of £17,668 per annum (unless otherwise specified), to cover their living expenses and have their fees waived for 36 months. In addition, research costs, including field work and conference attendance, will be met.

Funded Studentships are open to both UK/EU and International students unless otherwise specified.

Eligibility criteria

Candidates for a PhD Studentship should demonstrate outstanding qualities and be motivated to complete a PhD in 4 years and must demonstrate:

• Outstanding academic potential as measured normally by either a 1st class honours degree (or equivalent Grade Point Average (GPA) or a Master’s degree with distinction or equivalent
• An IELTS (Academic) score of 6.5 minimum (with a minimum 6.0 in each component, or equivalent) for candidates for whom English is not their first language and this must be evidenced at point of application.

Additional Eligibility:

• Degree in gaming design or software engineering, or degree in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, or computational science with a strong skillset in game development
• Knowledge of mathematics in game development, such as mesh generation and movement modelling
• Skills of developing VR-based applications using the Unity game engine
• Skills of one or more of these programming languages: C++, C#, Python, Java/JavaScript
• Experience of working with APIs, including web APIs
• Experience of experimental design in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, multi-modal data collection and integration, and data analysis
• Experience of implementation of network communication (time-critical alignment of data streams using labstreaming layer)
• Experience of website development or web VR development
• Skills or experience of working in interdisciplinary teams and managing interdisciplinary projects

Closing date: The first call for applications will close on 05 Feb 2023.

For further information on how to apply click the ‘Apply’ button above, or email pgradmissions@bournemouth.ac.uk

Apply now: https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/study/courses/phd-studentship-embodied-face-perception-affective-social-interactions-social-anxiety?utm_source=studentships2023&utm_medium=jobs-ac-uk&utm_campaign=external-listing&utm_term=jobs.ac.uk

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