Category: EEG / MEG

Categories
Adaptive Control EEG / MEG Evoked Activity Linguistics Neural dynamics Papers Semantics Uncategorized

New paper in Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science: Mamash­li et al.

Jonas col­lab­o­rat­ed with for­mer Max Planck col­leagues and the Mari­nos Imag­ing Cen­ter at Har­vard (first author Fahimeh Mamash­li) on a re-analy­sis of a sim­ple speech/language par­a­digm.

In this new paper out now in J Neu­rosci, Fahimeh shows that activ­i­ty in the infe­ri­or frontal gyrus (IFG) doesn’t just respond to meaning—it pre­dicts it. Using machine learn­ing, we demon­strate that IFG activ­i­ty can fore­cast future activ­i­ty in the supe­ri­or and mid­dle tem­po­ral gyri dur­ing the N400 win­dow, a key neur­al mark­er of seman­tic pro­cess­ing. This pro­vides rare, arguably causal, evi­dence for feed­back from frontal to tem­po­ral areas, sup­port­ing dynam­ic, bidi­rec­tion­al mod­els of lan­guage comprehension.

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.

Categories
Editorial Notes Neural dynamics Neural Oscillations Uncategorized

eLife insight on uni­fy­ing brain networks

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. 

 

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Clinical relevance EEG / MEG

New paper with the Weisz lab in eLife: Aber­rant per­cep­tu­al pre­dic­tions in Tinnitus

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.”

 

Categories
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

Categories
Attention Clinical relevance EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Psychiatry Speech perception

A busy talk sched­ule at the Obleser lab

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!

Categories
Ageing Attention Grants Neural dynamics Neural Filters Papers Psychology

New paper in eLife: Brain and behav­iour go sep­a­rate ways in the age­ing listener

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!

Categories
Ageing Attention Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Computational Modelling fMRI Job Offers Neural Oscillations Speech perception

We are hir­ing: two new PhD train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties start­ing ear­ly next year!

© az1172/ Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

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!