Eating behavior and sexuality are important research areas in the ATIAUVA01 project ‘MRI based prediction of individual differences. In this project ATIA and the Spinoza Centre of the UvA collaborate to detect MRI-based predictors of eating behavior and obesity, sexuality, IQ and personality. 

Every other month, starting from January 2011, we expect to include 100 extra participants in our analyses. These data include personal information (including BMI), questionnaires related to eating behavior and personality, behavioral tests with food items and a bogus snack task.

In preparation of the final MRI analyses in this study we have the following questions:

1. What are the correlations of the questionnaire and task measurements with BMI?
2. What is the factor structure of those data?
3. Which sub-groups are contained in the data according to decision tree, machine learning, K-means etc.?
4. How do groups that are a priori created on one measure score on the other measures

The first two questions will indicate which variables should be predicted by the MRI-based measures. The third and fourth questions indicate which groups should be compared on MRI-based measures.

We Expect

An enthusiastic intern who

• Explores the literature on the domain
• Assists in entering some data and convert them to SPSS
• Works on questions 1 and 3b at the least; adding a personal research question is possible
• Prepares a report and two presentations (one introductory and one final)

We offer

• An expert-team that is dedicated to develop computer assisted  diagnosis and indication (personalized medicine), e.g. for obesity
• Supervision by a PhD in psychology and/or biomedical sciences
• Experience in using SPSS for correlational and comparative statistical analyses
• Experience with factor analysis (question 2)
• Experience with Matlab and classification procedures (question 3a)
• A monthly allowance of € 300,-

Interested?

Contact K.Bocker@ati-a.nl for more information, or send them your résumé (CV) and a letter stating your motivation for this internship.