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Category: Publications

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Auditory Perception EEG / MEG Media Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Perception Publications

3sat fea­tures neur­al oscil­la­tions on TV

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:

[Update] If the embed­ded video is not work­ing for you, watch it on the 3sat web­site (Flash).

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]
Categories
Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Degraded Acoustics Executive Functions Papers Publications

Lis­ten­ing: The strat­e­gy mat­ters [Update]

In press on Neuropsychologia

Thal­a­m­ic and pari­etal brain mor­phol­o­gy pre­dicts audi­to­ry cat­e­go­ry learning

figure_mat

Cat­e­go­riz­ing sounds is vital for adap­tive human behav­ior. Accord­ing­ly, chang­ing lis­ten­ing sit­u­a­tions (exter­nal noise, but also periph­er­al hear­ing loss in aging) require lis­ten­ers to flex­i­bly adjust their cat­e­go­riza­tion strate­gies, e.g., switch amongst avail­able acoustic cues. How­ev­er, lis­ten­ers dif­fer con­sid­er­ably in these adap­tive capa­bil­i­ties. For this rea­son, we employed vox­el-based mor­phom­e­try (VBM) in our study (Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia, In press), in order to assess the degree to which indi­vid­ual brain mor­phol­o­gy is pre­dic­tive of such adap­tive lis­ten­ing behavior.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Lis­ten­ing: The strat­e­gy mat­ters [Update]”

Ref­er­ences

  • Scharinger M1, Hen­ry MJ2, Erb J2, Mey­er L3, Obleser J2. Thal­a­m­ic and pari­etal brain mor­phol­o­gy pre­dicts audi­to­ry cat­e­go­ry learn­ing. Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia. 2014 Jan;53:75–83. PMID: 24035788. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Perception Publications

New paper in press: Her­rmann, Hen­ry, Grigutsch & Obleser, The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science [Update]

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]
Categories
Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Auditory Working Memory Executive Functions fMRI Papers Perception Publications

New paper has been pub­lished in Cere­bral Cor­tex by Hen­ry, Her­rmann, & Obleser

When we lis­ten to sounds like speech and music, we have to make sense of dif­fer­ent acoustic fea­tures that vary simul­ta­ne­ous­ly along mul­ti­ple time scales. This means that we, as lis­ten­ers, have to selec­tive­ly attend to, but at the same time selec­tive­ly ignore, sep­a­rate but inter­twined fea­tures of a stimulus.

Brain regions associated with selective attending to and selective ignoring of temporal stimulus features.
Brain regions asso­ci­at­ed with selec­tive attend­ing to and selec­tive ignor­ing of tem­po­ral stim­u­lus fea­tures. (more)

A new­ly pub­lished fMRI study by Mol­ly Hen­ry, Björn Her­rmann, and Jonas Obleser found a net­work of brain regions that respond­ed oppo­site­ly to iden­ti­cal stim­u­lus char­ac­ter­is­tics depend­ing on whether they were rel­e­vant or irrel­e­vant, even when both stim­u­lus fea­tures involved atten­tion to time and tem­po­ral features.

You can check out the arti­cle here:

http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/08/23/cercor.bht240.full

Ref­er­ences

  • Hen­ry MJ, Her­rmann B, Obleser J. Selec­tive Atten­tion to Tem­po­ral Fea­tures on Nest­ed Time Scales. Cereb Cor­tex. 2013 Aug 26. PMID: 23978652. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Clinical relevance EEG / MEG Evoked Activity Hearing Loss Papers Psychology Publications

New paper in press: Her­rmann et al., Hear­ing Research [Update]

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]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Auditory Speech Processing Degraded Acoustics Executive Functions fMRI Noise-Vocoded Speech Papers Perception Publications Speech

New paper out: Erb, Hen­ry, Eis­ner & Obleser — Jour­nal of Neuroscience

We are proud to announce that PhD stu­dent Julia Erb just came out with a paper issued in Jour­nal  of Neu­ro­science:

The Brain Dynam­ics of Rapid Per­cep­tu­al Adap­ta­tion to Adverse Lis­ten­ing Conditions

Effects of adaptation

Grab it here:

Abstract:

Lis­ten­ers show a remark­able abil­i­ty to quick­ly adjust to degrad­ed speech input. Here, we aimed to iden­ti­fy the neur­al mech­a­nisms of such short-term per­cep­tu­al adap­ta­tion. In a sparse-sam­pling, car­diac-gat­ed func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI) acqui­si­tion, human lis­ten­ers heard and repeat­ed back 4‑band-vocod­ed sentences 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “New paper out: Erb, Hen­ry, Eis­ner & Obleser — Jour­nal of Neuroscience”

Ref­er­ences

  • Erb J, Hen­ry MJ, Eis­ner F, Obleser J. The brain dynam­ics of rapid per­cep­tu­al adap­ta­tion to adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions. J Neu­rosci. 2013 Jun 26;33(26):10688–97. PMID: 23804092. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience EEG / MEG Papers Publications

New paper out: Her­rmann, Hen­ry, and Obleser in Jour­nal of Neurophysiology

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]
Categories
Papers Perception Publications

New Paper in press — Scharinger, Hen­ry, Obleser, in Mem­o­ry & Cognition

For nor­mal-hear­ing humans, cat­e­go­riz­ing com­plex acoustic stim­uli is a seem­ing­ly effort­less process, even if one has nev­er heard the par­tic­u­lar sounds before. Nev­er­the­less, pri­or expe­ri­ence with spe­cif­ic cor­re­la­tions between acoustic stim­u­lus prop­er­ties affects the cat­e­go­riza­tion in a ben­e­fi­cial way, as we show in our paper:

Pri­or expe­ri­ence with neg­a­tive spec­tral cor­re­la­tions pro­motes infor­ma­tion inte­gra­tion dur­ing audi­to­ry cat­e­go­ry learning

(by Math­ias Scharinger, Mol­ly Hen­ry, and Jonas Obleser).

The arti­cle is in press at Mem­o­ry & Cog­ni­tion (avail­able online). Our main find­ing is that stim­uli dif­fer­ing in the loca­tion of two spec­tral peaks were bet­ter cat­e­go­rized if there was a neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tion between the two spec­tral peaks than if there was a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion. Since neg­a­tive spec­tral cor­re­la­tions char­ac­ter­ize pho­net­ic speech prop­er­ties, our find­ings sug­gest that short-term audi­to­ry cat­e­go­ry learn­ing is influ­enced by long-term rep­re­sen­ta­tions of abstract acoustic-pho­net­ic prop­er­ties (here: spec­tral correlations).

Ref­er­ences

  • Scharinger M, Hen­ry MJ, Obleser J. Pri­or expe­ri­ence with neg­a­tive spec­tral cor­re­la­tions pro­motes infor­ma­tion inte­gra­tion dur­ing audi­to­ry cat­e­go­ry learn­ing. Mem Cog­nit. 2013 Jul;41(5):752–68. PMID: 23354998. [Open with Read]