Category: Executive Functions

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Auditory Perception Clinical relevance Degraded Acoustics Effort Executive Functions Hearing Loss Papers Perception Psychology Speech perception Uncategorized

New paper in Trends in Hear­ing: Hear­ing aids add a demon­stra­ble amount of cog­ni­tive burden

A true Hoer­hanse col­labo: Markus Kem­per and our col­leagues from the Deutsche Hörg­eräte Insti­tut (DHI) show, with Jonas’ help, and using data acquired in our lab, that hear­ing aids do take their how­ev­er slight toll on the cog­ni­tive system: 

Despite the unques­tion­ably great help that hear­ing devices do pro­vide to those with impaired hear­ing, the tech­ni­cal noise and dig­i­tal sig­nal pro­cess­ing chain of hear­ing aids do ampli­fy mea­sur­ably the typ­i­cal sig­na­tures of effort­ful listening.

Espe­cial­ly the pupil dila­tion, hall­mark of increased locus coeruleus/noradrenergic activ­i­ty in response to sensory–cognitive chal­lenges, is notably more pro­nounced when lis­ten­ers respond to a stan­dard speech-intell­gi­bil­i­ty test (OLSA) while lis­ten­ing through a “trans­par­ent” (i.e., switched-on, but not ampli­fy­ing) hear­ing aid.

Out now in Trends in Hear­ing.

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
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!

 

Categories
Ageing Attention Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Auditory Speech Processing EEG / MEG Executive Functions fMRI Grants Hearing Loss Linguistics Neural dynamics Perception Semantics Uncategorized

A grant dou­ble to celebrate

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

 

Categories
Attention Memory Papers

New Paper in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports by Lui&Wöstmann

A tick­ing clock in the liv­ing room; an ambi­ent music in the café; the foot­steps of a passers­by on the street – We are sur­round­ed by a pletho­ra of dis­tract­ing events with reg­u­lar tem­po­ral struc­tures in dai­ly life. Can we ignore these dis­trac­tors better?

Tro­by Ka-Yan Lui and Malte Wöst­mann recent­ly pub­lished a study on the effect of tem­po­ral­ly reg­u­lar ver­sus irreg­u­lar dis­trac­tors on the abil­i­ty to main­tain items in mem­o­ry. Sur­pris­ing­ly, they found that the tem­po­ral reg­u­lar­i­ty of dis­trac­tors did not have an effect on participant’s mem­o­ry per­for­mance. Instead, they found an effect of the tem­po­ral reg­u­lar­i­ty of dis­trac­tors on response behav­iour – par­tic­i­pants were faster and more biased in respond­ing whether the cur­rent num­ber matched with the num­ber in memory.

These results have the­o­ret­i­cal impli­ca­tions: exter­nal dis­trac­tion may have a more per­va­sive influ­ence on dif­fer­ent aspects of cog­ni­tive process­es than mem­o­ry main­te­nance. The arti­cle will soon be avail­able in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports.