Signal Processing Engineer

The Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language – BCBL- (San Sebastián, Basque Country, Spain) is offering a postdoctoral position focused on SIGNAL PROCESSING ENGINEER, as part of an ERC funded research project OsciLang (PI: Manuel Carreiras).

The goal of OsciLang is to provide an affordable, lightweight, wearable brain-computer-interface neurofeedback system that can facilitate the detection and treatment of language disorders such as dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI). To date there is no established neurofeedback protocols for treating language or reading impairments. In essence, this tool will (a) diagnose/measure and (b)improve/rehabilitate an individual’s ability to synchronize their brain’s activity with changes in a speech signal. This novel type ofneurofeedback, based on phase coherence of the neural oscillatory activity with speech, will allow us to detect and enhance language function. It capitalizes on our recent research on neural oscillations during speech processing, where we found reduced auditory tracking in delta band in dyslexic readers compared with controls, advocating impaired auditory processing in dyslexia. Thus, our work and related findings suggest that literacy skills in dyslexics will improve by means of neurofeedback training protocols that enhance brain-speech tracking capabilities, especially in noisy environments.

OsciLang will help to sustainably enhance brain-speech synchronization strength by allowing participants to shape their neural activity while tracking speech. This will be accomplished by presenting participants with a simple and friendly interface that quantifies basic parameters of their brain activity in real time, measured via EEG. This information can then be used by participants to facilitate top-down control on specific activation patterns. Based on our prior findings, OsciLang’ algorithms will be monitoring phase coherence at theta and delta bands, an innovative approach that has yet to be implemented in a neurofeedback system. Oscilang will also lay the foundations for extending this novel approach to provide a general framework and technology for enhancing any individual’s ability to learn to read.

The successful candidate will join this challenging project . Work undertaken related to this position will be focused on the development the code to refine and optimize the software, test the system and create the prototype.