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.
Category: EEG / MEG
Obleserlab network-science wiz and designated head of OPM-magnetoencephalography operations in Lübeck, Mohsen Alavash has provided a neat little “insight” (a magazine-like brief article, essentially) in scientific journal eLife, “Brain Activity: Unifying networks of a rhythm”.
In his eLife insight, Mohsen covers a new study on brain-wide beta oscillatory networks and their link to the dopaminergic system. The study emerges from the lab of Julian Neumann, with Meera Chikermane as lead author. Check it out.
Now out in eLife, Lisa Reisinger and Nathan Weisz (Salzburg) with a diverse team including myself (J.O.) show, using state of the art decoding models and a rigorous approach of internal, pre-registered replication, that people living with tinnitus (a chronic and often very distressing auditory “phantom percept”) show altered patterns of predictive auditory processing. Check it out!
The eLife editorial assessment reads like this: “This important work presents two studies on predictive processes in subjects with and without tinnitus. The evidence supporting the authors’ claims is compelling, as their second study serves as an independent replication of the first. Rigorous matching between study groups was performed, especially in the second study, increasing the probability that the identified differences in predictive processing can truly be attributed to the presence of tinnitus. This work will be of interest to researchers, especially neuroscientists, in the tinnitus field.”
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”.
These two weeks, we have been fortunate to host two superbe guest talks by Philipp Sterzer from Universität Basel and Ayelet Landau from Hebrew University of Jerusalem here at the Center of Brain, Behavior and Metabolism.
Philipp Sterzer spoke of his rich and intruiging body of work showing how the predictive perceiving mind appears to fluctuate between a more externally-oriented, evidence-seeking mode (my words, JO) and a more internally-oriented mode. Philipp’s studies continue to inspire ongoing work here at our lab, and it was a pleasure to hypothesise about the effects of Ketamine on auditory evidence accumulation. Thanks, Philipp!
Ayelet Landau presented us with her fascinating account of how internal, endogenous brain rhythms and external, environmental (or other individuals’ brain) rhythms match up and shape the human experience – with thought-provoking links appearing between the organisation of language, states of consciousness, and not least trait-like differences from one person to another. Thanks, Ayelet!
Out now in eLife: Obleserlab stats modelling wiz Sarah Tune together with Jonas has just published a serious statistical piece of evidence on how, in our >N=100 cohort of ageing listeners as funded by the European Research Council, neural signatures of attentive listening and the actual behavioural outcome a listener achieves are not trivially connected, and in fact are not even predictive of one another – when we look at the longitudinal, two-year trajectory that listeners exhibit in both measures over time.
This study (here is a brief eLife digest on it) poses a keystone result to the ERC project “AUDADAPT”, which we now continue with other projects and spin-offs. Many thanks to the large group of Lübeck citizens who continue to support us with their precious time and their brain and behavioural data!
Diese Studie (hier ist eine kurze eLife-Zusammenfassung) ist ein Schlüsselergebnis des ERC-Projekts “AUDADAPT”, das wir nun mit anderen Projekten und Spin-offs fortsetzen. Vielen Dank an die große Gruppe von Lübecker Bürgerinnen und Bürgern, die uns weiterhin mit ihrer kostbaren Zeit und ihren Gehirn- und Verhaltensdaten unterstützen!
Our two senior researchers, Sarah Tune and Malte Wöstmann, are happy to each announce the opening of a three-year PhD position in the Obleser lab. The positions are part of two recently funded DFG grants, and will feature really exciting combinations of behaviour modelling and neural dynamics!
Sarah’s project will look into how perceptual inference changes with age, using speech perception as a model system. It will bring together behavioural speech perception experiments and functional neuroimaging, and apply computational modelling to link between the two.
For full details, see the official job ad.
Malte’s project will focus on auditory attention and its neural bases. It will combine behavioural and electroencephalography (EEG) data in younger and older adults to investigate the neuro-cognitive mechanisms underlying capture of attention and suppression of distraction.
For full details, see the official job ad.
The application deadline (as single PDF to the email address named in the ad!) is Nov 19, 2023!
Please don’t hesitate to contact Sarah or Malte if you have any informal questions about PhD positions and projects. Sarah will also be at APAN and SfN soon, if you feel like chatting with her about the position.
We are looking forward to many interesting applications!
We are honoured and delighted that the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has deemed two of our recent applications worthy of funding: The two senior researchers in the lab, Sarah Tune and Malte Wöstmann, have both been awarded three-year grant funding for their new projects. Congratulations!
In her 3‑year, 360‑K€ project “How perceptual inference changes with age: Behavioural and brain dynamics of speech perception”, Sarah Tune will explore the role of perceptual priors in speech perception in the ageing listener. She will mainly use neural and perceptual modelling and functional neuroimaging.
In his 3‑year, 270‑K€ project “Investigation of capture and suppression in auditory attention”, Malte Wöstmann will continue and refine his successful research endeavour into dissociating the role of suppressive mechanisms in the listening mind and brain, mainly using EEG and behavioural modelling.
Both of them will soon advertise posts for PhD candidates to join us, accordingly, and to work on these exciting projects with Sarah and Malte and the rest of the Obleserlab team