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Category: Neural Oscillations

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Auditory Working Memory Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Executive Functions Neural Oscillations Noise-Vocoded Speech Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: Obleser et al., The Jour­nal of Neuroscience

Adverse Lis­ten­ing Con­di­tions and Mem­o­ry Load Dri­ve a Com­mon Alpha Oscil­la­to­ry Network

Whether we are engaged in small talk or try­ing to mem­o­rise a tele­phone num­ber — it is our short-term mem­o­ry that ensures we don’t lose track. But what if the very same mem­o­ry gets addi­tion­al­ly taxed because the words to be remem­bered are hard to understand?

Obleser et al., J Neu­rosci 2012: Alpha oscil­la­tions are enhanced both by mem­o­rised dig­its and by the adverse acoustic con­di­tions that these dig­its had been pre­sent­ed in.
Obleser, J., Woest­mann, M., Hell­bernd, N., Wilsch, A. , Maess, B. (2012). Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon alpha oscil­la­to­ry net­work. Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science. Sep­tem­ber 5, 2012 • 32(36):12376 –12383

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Wöst­mann M, Hell­bernd N, Wilsch A, Maess B. Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon α oscil­la­to­ry net­work. J Neu­rosci. 2012 Sep 5;32(36):12376–83. PMID: 22956828. [Open with Read]
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Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: “Don’t be enslaved by the enve­lope” – Com­ment on Giraud & Poep­pel (2012)

Today appears a com­ment / opin­ion arti­cle, with a tad bit of fresh evi­dence from our lab, that is main­ly a reply to Anne-Lise Giraud and David Poeppel’s recent “per­spec­tive” arti­cle on Neur­al oscil­la­tions in speech.

We loved that arti­cle, obvi­ous­ly, but after the ini­tial excite­ment, a few con­cerns stuck with us. In essence, the prob­lems are (i) how to define theta for the pur­pos­es of analysing speech com­pre­hen­sion process­es, (ii) not to over­ly focus on the speech enve­lope (i.e., not to neglect spec­tral / fine-struc­ture aspects of speech), and (iii) the unsolved chicken–egg prob­lem of how neur­al entrain­ment and speech intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty real­ly relate to each other.

But read for your­self (It’s pleas­ant­ly short!).

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Her­rmann B, Hen­ry MJ. Neur­al Oscil­la­tions in Speech: Don’t be Enslaved by the Enve­lope. Front Hum Neu­rosci. 2012 Aug 31;6:250. PMID: 22969717. [Open with Read]
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Editorial Notes Neural Oscillations Publications

New Pub­lic Sci­ence Weblog by our Max Planck Institute

I am per­son­al­ly not entire­ly con­vinced whether Weblogs will sur­vive as a tool for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Notwith­stand­ing, I am sup­port­ing the idea of our Insti­tute togeth­er with Ger­man pub­lic sci­ence mag­a­zine “Spek­trum der Wis­senschaft” to start a new blog, enti­tled “Neu­rocog­ni­tion”. It’s host­ed at scilogs.eu and scilogs.de. I have the hon­our to serve as one of the staff writ­ers there, let’s see where this will take us.

For a start, I let go and wrote about my fas­ci­na­tion with brain oscil­la­tions. Please pre­tend at least to be sur­prised on this choice of topic!

Categories
Auditory Working Memory Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Events Executive Functions Neural Oscillations Posters Publications

Fur­ther posters at SFN / Neu­ro­science 2011

In addi­tion to the excit­ing con­so­nan­tal mis­match neg­a­tiv­i­ty work Math­ias and Alexan­dra will be show­ing (TUESDAY AM ses­sion, posters UU10 and UU11), we will have the fol­low­ing posters this year. Come by!

Chris Petkov and I are show­ing our brand new data in the TUESDAY PM ses­sion, poster LL14.

I myself will be pre­sent­ing in the WEDNESDAY AM ses­sion, XX15 – more alpha oscil­la­tions in work­ing mem­o­ry under speech degradation.

Final­ly, I also have the plea­sure to be a co-author on Sarah Jessen’s, who is show­ing très cool mul­ti­modal inte­gra­tion data on voic­es and bod­ies under noisy con­di­tions in the WEDNESDAY PM ses­sion, XX15.

Categories
Auditory Speech Processing Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Noise-Vocoded Speech Papers Publications Speech

New paper accept­ed in Cere­bral Cor­tex [Update]

Obleser, J., Weisz, N. (in press) Sup­pressed alpha oscil­la­tions pre­dict intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty of speech and its acoustic details. Cere­bral Cortex.

[Update]

Paper is avail­able here.

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Weisz N. Sup­pressed alpha oscil­la­tions pre­dict intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty of speech and its acoustic details. Cereb Cor­tex. 2012 Nov;22(11):2466–77. PMID: 22100354. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Working Memory Clinical relevance EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: Alpha oscil­la­tions in audition

I am also delight­ed to report the fruits of a very recent col­lab­o­ra­tion with Nathan Weisz and his OBOB lab at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kon­stanz, Germany.

Alpha Rhythms in Audi­tion: Cog­ni­tive and Clin­i­cal Perspectives

In this review paper, which appears in the new, excit­ing “Fron­tiers in Psy­chol­o­gy” jour­nal, we sum the recent evi­dence that alpha oscil­la­tions (here broad­ly defined from 6 to 13 Hz) are play­ing a very inter­est­ing role in the audi­to­ry sys­tem, just as they do in the visu­al and the somatosen­so­ry system.

In essence, we back Ole Jensen’s and oth­ers’ quite pari­mo­nious idea of alpha as a func­tion­al inhi­bi­tion / gat­ing sys­tem across cor­ti­cal areas.

From our own lab, pre­lim­i­nary data from two recent exper­i­ments is includ­ed: On the role of alpha osil­la­tions as a poten­tial mark­er for speech intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty and its acoustic deter­mi­nants, as well as on speech degra­da­tion and work­ing mem­o­ry load and their com­bined reflec­tion in alpha pow­er increases.

 

NB — the final pdf is still lack­ing, and Front Psy­chol is still not list­ed in PubMed. This should not stop you from sub­mit­ting to their excit­ing new jour­nals, as the review process is very fair and effi­cient and the out­reach via free avail­abil­i­ty promis­es to be considerable.

Ref­er­ences

  • Weisz N, Hart­mann T, Müller N, Lorenz I, Obleser J. Alpha rhythms in audi­tion: cog­ni­tive and clin­i­cal per­spec­tives. Front Psy­chol. 2011 Apr 26;2:73. PMID: 21687444. [Open with Read]