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Category: Psychiatry

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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!

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Ageing Clinical relevance Papers Psychiatry Publications Uncategorized

New papers in autumn 2023:

Twen­ty-twen­tythree has prob­a­bly not been our most pro­lif­ic year in terms of putting out new research find­ings, which in part is an inter­est­ing delayed con­se­quence of the lab close-down/s­low-down in the pan­dem­ic years. But …

… here we are in autumn 2023 with no less than three fresh find­ings and perspectives:

First, grad­u­ate trainee Frauke Kraus has pub­lished in the Soci­ety for Neu­ro­science out­let eNeu­ro her new find­ings on how moti­va­tion­al state is able to affect lis­ten­ing behav­iour and lis­ten­ing effort (as prox­ied by pupil dilation).

Sec­ond, with our col­leagues from the trans­la­tion­al psy­chi­a­try unit, main­ly Christi­na Andreou and Ste­fan Borg­wardt, Jonas con­tributed to an umbrel­la review on the most like­ly can­di­date pre­dic­tors of an indi­vid­ual at risk tran­si­tion­ing into psy­chosis, in the Jour­nal Trans­la­tion­al Psy­chi­a­try (a spin-off by the mar­ket­ing genius­es at Nature Springer) – the umbrel­la review pos­es a corol­lary of our joint work on hal­lu­ci­na­tions and meta-cog­ni­tion in nor­mal and aber­rant per­cep­tion (stay tuned for more on that one!).

Not least, a new review and a true col­lab­o­ra­tive effort from many neu­ro­science col­leagues here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck led by Nico Bun­zeck, we are argu­ing in Neu­ro­science and Biobe­hav­iour­al  Reviews that patho­log­i­cal aging might begin in earnest when and if the typical/healthy func­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion for brain struc­tur­al decline breaks down. Check it out.

Ref­er­ences

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Brain stimulation Clinical relevance Neural Oscillations Papers Psychiatry Psychology Voice

New Review paper on Cir­ca­di­an Rhythms in Audi­to­ry Hal­lu­ci­na­tions and Psy­chosis to come out in “Acta Physiologica”

As part of our increased efforts to under­stand the impact of chrono­bi­ol­o­gy in sen­sa­tion and per­cep­tion, a new review arti­cle by senior researcher Hong-Viet Ngo in the lab and Jonas Obleser, togeth­er with psy­chi­a­trist Christi­na Andreou and chrononeu­ro­phys­i­ol­o­gist Hen­rik Oster is forthcoming!

The paper sum­maris­es our (sketchy) knowl­edge on how cir­ca­di­an rhythms impact audi­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tion propen­si­ty, and how key neur­al sig­na­tures E:I (dys-)balance and dopamin­er­gic sig­nalling joint­ly might con­tribute to hal­lu­ci­na­tions as a key symp­tom in  psy­chosis. The paper has been accept­ed in the clas­sic jour­nal Acta Phys­i­o­log­i­ca. A preprint ver­sion is avail­able here.

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Brain stimulation Memory Papers Psychiatry Publications Sleep

New Paper in Jour­nal of Sleep Research by Wein­hold et al.

In a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sara Lena Wein­hold and Robert Göder at the Chris­t­ian-Albrechts-Uni­ver­si­ty Kiel, Hong-Viet V. Ngo recent­ly pub­lished a study inves­ti­gat­ing the influ­ence of audi­to­ry stim­u­la­tion dur­ing sleep on mem­o­ry con­sol­i­da­tion in peo­ple with schizophrenia.

The study shows that audi­to­ry stim­u­la­tion tar­get­ing slow oscil­la­tions – a key rhythm medi­at­ing mem­o­ry pro­cess­ing – in real-time in peo­ple with schiz­o­phre­nia results in an elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal response that is sim­i­lar to that in healthy par­tic­i­pants. Albeit an absent effect of stim­u­la­tion on mem­o­ry con­sol­i­da­tion, the authors found the stronger the slow oscil­la­tion enhance­ment the less par­tic­i­pants for­got, i.e., the bet­ter mem­o­ry per­for­mance was, the fol­low­ing morning.

Thus, this paper not only con­firms the over­all fea­si­bil­i­ty of this approach and pro­vides essen­tial elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal insights. It fur­ther­more high­lights the poten­tial of audi­to­ry stim­u­la­tion to pro­vide alter­na­tive treat­ments for sleep-relat­ed dys­func­tions in patients with schiz­o­phre­nia. The arti­cle is avail­able here.