On this years SPIN (Speech in Noise) workshop in Marseille, our very own Malte Wöstmann received the Colin Cherry Best Poster Award, elected by workshop attendees.
Judge for yourself and check out the Poster (PDF) here.
Category: EEG / MEG
Björn Herrmann has yet another paper in press in the Journal of Neuroscience!
Dynamic Range Adaptation to Spectral Stimulus Statistics in Human Auditory Cortex
The paper is now available online free of charge, and—funnily enough—appeared right on January 1, 2014.
References
- Herrmann B, Schlichting N, Obleser J. Dynamic range adaptation to spectral stimulus statistics in human auditory cortex. J Neurosci. 2014 Jan 1;34(1):327–31. PMID: 24381293. [Open with Read]
Watch this space and the PLOS ONE website for a forthcoming article by Molly Henry and me;
Dissociable neural response signatures for slow amplitude and frequency modulation in human auditory cortex
Harking back at what we had argued initially in our 2012 Frontiers op’ed piece (together with Björn Herrmann), Molly presents neat evidence for dissociable cortical signatures of slow amplitude versus frequency modulation. These cortical signatures potentially provide an efficient means to dissect simultaneously communicated slow temporal and spectral information in acoustic communication signals.
[Update]References
- Henry MJ, Obleser J. Dissociable neural response signatures for slow amplitude and frequency modulation in human auditory cortex. PLoS One. 2013 Oct 29;8(10):e78758. PMID: 24205309. [Open with Read]
German public television broadcaster 3sat featured our research on neural oscillations (see our PNAS Paper) in its series nano .
Unfortunately it’s only in German. However, have fun watching it:
References
- Henry MJ, Obleser J. Frequency modulation entrains slow neural oscillations and optimizes human listening behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Dec 4;109(49):20095–100. PMID: 23151506. [Open with Read]
Oscillatory Phase Dynamics in Neural Entrainment Underpin Illusory Percepts of Time
Natural sounds like speech and music inherently vary in tempo over time. Yet, contextual factors such as variations in the sound’s loudness or pitch influence perception of temporal rate change towards slowing down or speeding up.
A new MEG study by Björn Herrmann, Molly Henry, Maren Grigutsch and Jonas Obleser asked for the neural oscillatory dynamics that underpin context-induced illusions in temporal rate change and found illusory percepts to be linked to changes in the neural phase patterns of entrained oscillations while the exact frequency of the oscillatory response was related to veridical percepts.
The paper is in press and forthcoming in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Update:
Paper is available online.
References
- Herrmann B, Henry MJ, Grigutsch M, Obleser J. Oscillatory phase dynamics in neural entrainment underpin illusory percepts of time. J Neurosci. 2013 Oct 2;33(40):15799–809. PMID: 24089487. [Open with Read]
Auditory filter width affects response magnitude but not frequency specificity in auditory cortex
This is fantastic news on a friday morning: Obleser lab Postdoc Björn Herrmann teamed up with his fellow Postdocs Mathias Scharinger and Molly Henry to study how spectral analysis in the auditory periphery (termed frequency selectivity) relates to processing in auditory cortex (termed frequency specificity; see also Björns paper in J Neurophysiol 2013).
Giving this an ageing and hearing loss perspective and building on the concept of auditory filters in the cochlea (Moore et al.), Björn found that the overall N1 amplitude of listeners, but not their frequency-specific neural adaptation patterns, is correlated with the pass-band of the auditory filter.
This suggests that widened auditory filters are compensated for by a response gain in frequency-specific areas of auditory cortex; the paper is in press and forthcoming in Hearing Research.
Update:
Paper is available online.
References
- Herrmann B, Henry MJ, Scharinger M, Obleser J. Auditory filter width affects response magnitude but not frequency specificity in auditory cortex. Hear Res. 2013 Oct;304:128–36. PMID: 23876524. [Open with Read]
German science magazine Spektrum published an article on our recent paper (see our post):
Frequency modulation entrains slow neural oscillations and optimizes human listening behavior
issued in PNAS here.
Illustrated with our nice group photo you can read the article: Mit Rhythmus geht auch Hören besser by Annegret Faber online.
References
- Henry MJ, Obleser J. Frequency modulation entrains slow neural oscillations and optimizes human listening behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Dec 4;109(49):20095–100. PMID: 23151506. [Open with Read]
In this study (available online)
Frequency-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex depends on the spectral variance in the acoustic stimulation
we show that adaptation of neural responses in human auditory cortex to acoustic stimulation is not fixed. Instead, the degree of co-adaptation in these tonotopically organized brain regions varies (widens/tightens) with the spectral properties of the acoustic stimulation. We relate this to sensory memory processes and short-term plasticity which allows for the neural system to adjust to the acoustic properties in the environment.
References
- Herrmann B, Henry MJ, Obleser J. Frequency-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex depends on the spectral variance in the acoustic stimulation. J Neurophysiol. 2013 Apr;109(8):2086–96. PMID: 23343904. [Open with Read]