Category: Neural dynamics

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
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
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 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
Ageing Auditory Neuroscience Clinical relevance Editorial Notes Hearing Loss Neural dynamics Uncategorized

It’s a wrap: The ERC Con­sol­ida­tor Project “Audadapt” has suc­cess­ful­ly ended

Six years in our lab with the age­ing, adapt­ing, lis­ten­ing brain and mind cen­ter-stage have come to a suc­cess­ful close.  Jonas’ ERC Con­sol­ida­tor grant had been grant­ed dur­ing the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion lab’s tenure at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Leipzig orig­i­nal­ly, and it has shaped our start and set­tling-in at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck ever since 2016.

Jonas: “In total almost 500 ses­sions of behav­iour, EEG and fMRI record­ed; more than 160 brave Lübeck folks and their brains fol­lowed lon­gi­tu­di­nal­ly over two years; 25 pub­li­ca­tions put out; and not least two PhDs fin­ished and five post­doc careers kick­start­ed — I am very grate­ful for the help of all these peo­ple, my host Insti­tu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck and the Euro­pean Research Coun­cil (ERC) hav­ing made this all hap­pen. Thank you all.”

All data will be or are already pub­licly avail­able on OSF, and we will update our ded­i­cat­ed “AUDADAPT” project page once the final report is in.

Categories
Adaptive Control Attention EEG / MEG Neural dynamics Papers Uncategorized

New paper in eLife, Waschke et al.

For­mer Oble­ser­lab PhD stu­dent Leo Waschke is now out in eLife with an inge­nious demon­stra­tion how both endoge­nous and exoge­nous­ly-dri­ven changes in the steep­ness of the brain-elec­tric 1/f pow­er spec­trum (in part linked direct­ly to local excitation:inhibiton, E:I, ratio) in neur­al pop­u­la­tions can affect behav­iour in com­plex, mul­ti-sen­so­ry envi­ron­ments: “Modal­i­ty-spe­cif­ic track­ing of atten­tion and sen­so­ry sta­tis­tics in the human elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal spec­tral expo­nent”. 

The results draw heav­i­ly on the recent spec­tral-slope expo­nent work by our col­lab­o­ra­tors at Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego in the lab of Bradley Voytek, and have come togeth­er in a three-lab col­labo of Lübeck, San Diego, and Leo’s cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic home, the Dou­glas Gar­rett lab at the MPIB.

 
Con­grat­u­la­tions, Leo!

https://twitter.com/bradleyvoytek/status/1451591258384650244?s=20