Fully funded postdoctoral position in Paris: Studying Respiratory Interoception and Affective Behaviour

[Sophie Bagur]

The MOBS team (ESPCI, Paris) is excited to announce a funded postdoctoral position (2-3years). We investigate vigilance and emotional brain states with a focus on brain-body interactions. This project, led by Dr. Sophie Bagur, delves into the neural circuits of respiratory interoception—the brain’s perception of breathing—and its behavioral impacts. While breathing is widely used to regulate emotion, the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood due to a lack of interventional studies. This research seeks to address this gap by parametrically manipulating breathing to causally isolate the neural encoding of respiratory interoception and uncover how these signals influence affective behaviors. The position involves large-scale neuronal recordings, optogenetics, behavioral experiments, and data analysis. We welcome applications from candidates with a background in neurophysiology and experience in mouse neurosurgery. Coding is a plus, but not strictly required since this can be acquired by interacting with other lab members with expertise in advanced data analysis (signal analysis, deep learning, neural dimensionality reduction...). If you’re interested in joining our team or have any questions about the position, please reach out to sophie.bagur@espci.fr. We look forward to hearing from you!