Category: Events

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Events Uncategorized

The Obleser lab branch­es out

Our lab has con­tin­ued to diver­si­fy con­sid­er­ably and to mature aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly over the last years. With Sarah Tune and Malte Wöst­mann, we have now two senior sci­en­tists who lead teams with­in our group, which I am very proud of. Sarah Tune leads the Cog­ni­tive Mod­el­ling team and Malte Wöst­mann has been lead­ing the Dynam­ics of Atten­tion team for quite a while.

At the bor­ders of our lab prop­er, I am very hap­py that Mohsen Alavash remains affil­i­at­ed with us, although he is now pri­mar­i­ly lead­ing the Lübeck OPM–Magnetoencephalography efforts.

Also, Niels Kloost­er­man oper­ates his research inde­pen­dent­ly in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy but I am very hon­oured that he col­lab­o­rates close­ly with us.

See the cur­rent and slight­ly updat­ed lab struc­ture of the Obleser lab | Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion group | Chair of Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy and Research Meth­ods again below.

Here’s to great sci­ence to come! Jonas

 

Categories
Acoustics Attention Auditory Neuroscience Events Media Neural Filters Publications Speech perception

Mar­tin Orf receives EUHA Award for Out­stand­ing Thesis

Mar­tin Orf is one of three recip­i­ents of this year’s EUHA Award for Out­stand­ing The­sis from the Euro­pean Union of Hear­ing Acousti­cians. His the­sis, titled “Selec­tive Atten­tion in Mul­ti-Talk­er Sit­u­a­tions: Neur­al and Behav­ioral Mech­a­nisms”, offers valu­able insights into the neur­al and behav­iour­al process­es behind selec­tive atten­tion in com­plex lis­ten­ing envi­ron­ments. A key find­ing of his research is that the neur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of attend­ed speech becomes stronger when a com­pet­ing, ignored speech stream is being com­pressed in its dynam­ics (a very com­mon yet ill-under­stood sig­nal pro­cess­ing tech­nique in audio pro­duc­tion and also in hear­ing devices). Martin’s dis­cov­ery could con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of future hear­ing aid algo­rithms and in the refine­ment  of exist­ing ones.

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Computational Modelling EEG / MEG Events Uncategorized

Joint lab meet­ing with the Don­ner lab

Last week, we ven­tured over to Ham­burg (a mere 65 km south­east of Lübeck) and spent a won­der­ful day with our friend­ly hosts, the Tobias Don­ner lab, at the Uni­ver­si­ty Clin­ic Eppen­dorf (UKE).

It was very inspir­ing to iden­ti­fy and dis­cuss the many com­mon threads that dri­ve our join inter­est in per­cep­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing, in fus­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling of behav­iour with M/EEG and fMRI data, and in neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal con­cepts of arousal or excitation/inhibition bal­ance. Stay tuned for more to come from this excit­ing joint ven­ture with our local neigh­bours! Thanks, Tobias and team, for hav­ing us.

PS. I hope you like my attempts of shoot­ing a prop­er “boomer selfie”.

Obleser lab boomer selfie

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Editorial Notes Events

New research build­ing for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck: LEMMI is here to stay.

A very for­tu­nate devel­op­ment: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck has been grant­ed a new research build­ing (by rec­om­men­da­tion of the Wis­senschaft­srat, a piv­otal, joint fed­er­al- and state-lev­el agency for these matters) .

Jonas Obleser had the priv­i­lege to help steer the con­cep­tu­al stages of this new “Lübeck envi­ron­ment for minds and machines in inter­ac­tion” (LEMMI – named after no famous cul­tur­al icon in par­tic­u­lar). See here for the press release by the Wis­senschaft­srat; the final say – as usu­al – will be with the „Gemein­same Wis­senschaft­skon­ferenz“ (GWK) of Ger­man fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments, which will con­vene next in July 2024.

The uni­ver­si­ty came out with a press release just now, and we are all very excit­ed that in the years to come a new, 3.000+ m2 research build­ing worth up to 63 mil­lion € might be built on Lübeck cam­pus premis­es that will cater specif­i­cal­ly to the needs of immer­sive AI-steered envi­ron­ments and all specifics of psy­cho­log­i­cal, com­put­er-sci­en­tif­ic and robot­ic research on human–AI interactions. 

Categories
Auditory Neuroscience Editorial Notes Events Psychology Uncategorized

Oble­ser­lab retreat Jan­u­ary 2024

A few weeks ago, we had two sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly very intense days where we retreat­ed to Cor­nelius Borck’s love­ly Uni­ver­si­ty out­post in the pit­toresque city cen­ter of Lübeck (thanks for hav­ing us!) and re-vis­it­ed and re-thought out cur­rent and future research agen­da. Thanks to all cur­rent (and future!) lab mem­bers who con­tributed so thought­ful­ly to this. I enjoyed it immense­ly. After a few years with­out prop­er lab retreats and now the pan­dem­ic behind us, we will cer­tain­ly do more of this lat­er in the year.

Categories
Editorial Notes Events Hearing Loss Probandensuche Uncategorized

The “Hörhanse” [hanseat­ic hear­ing] has begun!

We are delight­ed to be a found­ing mem­ber of the Hörhanse, a Lübeck con­sor­tium of all play­ers research­ing, teach­ing, sell­ing, or treat­ing hear­ing.
Hear­ing acoustics is a focal point at the Hanse Inno­va­tion Cam­pus Lübeck. Unique in Ger­many is the large num­ber of insti­tu­tions that work togeth­er with renowned play­ers to advance the top­ic of hear­ing around the cam­pus: Hear­ing, acoustics and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are advanced in their most diverse facets in research projects, study pro­grammes, the nation­wide train­ing of hear­ing care pro­fes­sion­als, in the clin­i­cal area and through inter­dis­ci­pli­nary coop­er­a­tion.

The found­ing project part­ners of HörHanse are the three uni­ver­si­ties in Lübeck: our host insti­tu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck, plus the Lübeck Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Musikhochschule Lübeck (MHL), as well as the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Schleswig-Hol­stein, the Ger­man Hear­ing Aid Insti­tute (DHI), the Fed­er­al Guild of Hear­ing Aid Acousti­cians (biha), the Acad­e­my of Hear­ing Aid Acoustics, the State Voca­tion­al School for Hear­ing Aid Acousti­cians, and the com­pa­ny hear con­cept.

 

See the Ger­man press release here.

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Editorial Notes Events Job Offers

New fund­ing: The Hoer­hanse is materialising

Details are to fol­low, but we and our many col­leagues in the Hoer­hanse Lübeck [hanseat­ic hear­ing] are very pleased to have secured sub­stan­tial funds to kick-start our com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cross-fer­til­iza­tion plat­form for hear­ing research, train­ing, and treat­ment here in Lübeck. The project will be host­ed at our part­ner, Hanse Inno­va­tion Cam­pus (HIC) Lübeck. HIC will also be hir­ing soon for this poject. Stay tuned for all the details!

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Editorial Notes Events Uncategorized

New mem­bers in the Obleser lab

In the Obleser lab, we wel­come new mem­bers and PhD stu­dents Mar­tin Orf and Tro­by Lui.
Mar­tin did his MSc in Audi­ol­o­gy Tech­nol­o­gy here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck. He is now join­ing us for PhD project fund­ed gen­er­ous­ly by our indus­try part­ner Widex Sivan­tos Audi­ol­o­gy,
revolv­ing around hear­ing aids and elec­troen­cephalo­graph­ic sig­na­tures of attention.
Tro­by did her MSc in Psy­chol­o­gy at Hong-Kong Uni­ver­si­ty and has already pub­lished in Neu­roim­age. She will do her PhD under direct super­vi­sion of Malte Wöst­mann in our lab, work­ing on a DFG-fund­ed project on atten­tion­al rhythms.
We also bid farewell to long-time Oble­ser­lab ally and PhD stu­dent Leo Waschke, who fin­ished his PhD on a high, and who is now a post­doc in Doug Garrett’s lab at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Berlin.
Hel­lo and Goodbye!