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Category: Publications

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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]
Categories
Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Editorial Notes EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Perception Publications

New paper out: Hen­ry & Her­rmann, Jour­nal of Neuroscience

Proud to announce that our post­docs Mol­ly Hen­ry and Björn Her­rmann just came out with a review/op piece in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science “jour­nal club” sec­tion, where only grad stu­dents or post­docs are allowed to author short review pieces.

A Pre­clud­ing Role of Low-Fre­quen­cy Oscil­la­tions for Audi­to­ry Per­cep­tion in a Con­tin­u­ous Pro­cess­ing Mode

The Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 5 Decem­ber 2012, 32(49): 17525–17527; doi: 10.1523/​JNEUROSCI.4456–12.2012

Mol­ly and Björn review (and com­ment on) an impor­tant paper by our friends and col­leagues Christoph Kayser and Benedikt Ng in the same jour­nal. Essen­tial­ly, they argue for the dis­tinc­tion of a con­tin­u­ous from an oscil­la­to­ry pro­cess­ing mode in lis­ten­ing, and pro­vide ten­ta­tive expla­na­tions of why some­times miss­es might be more mod­u­lat­ed by neur­al oscil­la­to­ry phase than hits. Con­grats, guys!

Ref­er­ences

  • Hen­ry MJ, Her­rmann B. A pre­clud­ing role of low-fre­quen­cy oscil­la­tions for audi­to­ry per­cep­tion in a con­tin­u­ous pro­cess­ing mode. J Neu­rosci. 2012 Dec 5;32(49):17525–7. PMID: 23223276. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Speech Processing EEG / MEG Media Neural Oscillations Publications Speech

DRa­dio broad­cast­ed three fea­tures on neur­al oscil­la­tions (Hen­ry & Obleser)

Ger­man radio broad­cast­er Deutsch­landra­dio pro­duced three recent reports on neur­al oscil­la­tions and our recent PNAS paper. You can lis­ten to/read (in Ger­man lan­guage) them here:

Next time we’ll post before the broad­cast­ing takes place…

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 Speech Processing EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Publications Speech

New Paper in PNAS: Hen­ry & Obleser [Updat­ed]

Our new paper on neur­al entrain­ment with spec­tral fluc­tu­a­tions, and its effects on near-thresh­old audi­to­ry per­cep­tion is now online in the “ear­ly edi­tion” of PNAS:

Hen­ry, MJ & Obleser, J (in press):

Fre­quen­cy mod­u­la­tion entrains slow neur­al oscil­la­tions and opti­mizes human lis­ten­ing behavior

Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (PNAS)


Here is the abstract:

The human abil­i­ty to con­tin­u­ous­ly track dynam­ic envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli, in par­tic­u­lar speech, is pro­posed to prof­it from “entrain­ment” of endoge­nous neur­al oscil­la­tions, which involves phase reor­ga­ni­za­tion such that “opti­mal” phase comes into line with tem­po­ral­ly expect­ed crit­i­cal events, result­ing in improved pro­cess­ing. The cur­rent exper­i­ment goes beyond pre­vi­ous work in this domain by address­ing two thus far unan­swered ques­tions. First, how gen­er­al is neur­al entrain­ment to envi­ron­men­tal rhythms: Can neur­al oscil­la­tions be entrained by tem­po­ral dynam­ics of ongo­ing rhyth­mic stim­uli with­out abrupt onsets? Sec­ond, does neur­al entrain­ment opti­mize per­for­mance of the per­cep­tu­al sys­tem: Does human audi­to­ry per­cep­tion ben­e­fit from neur­al phase reor­ga­ni­za­tion? In a human elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy study, lis­ten­ers detect­ed short gaps dis­trib­uted uni­form­ly with respect to the phase angle of a 3‑Hz fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed stim­u­lus. Lis­ten­ers’ abil­i­ty to detect gaps in the fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed sound was not uni­form­ly dis­trib­uted in time, but clus­tered in cer­tain pre­ferred phas­es of the mod­u­la­tion. More­over, the opti­mal stim­u­lus phase was indi­vid­u­al­ly deter­mined by the neur­al delta oscil­la­tion entrained by the stim­u­lus. Final­ly, delta phase pre­dict­ed behav­ior bet­ter than stim­u­lus phase or the event-relat­ed poten­tial after the gap. This study demon­strates behav­ioral ben­e­fits of phase realign­ment in response to fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed audi­to­ry stim­uli, over­all sug­gest­ing that fre­quen­cy fluc­tu­a­tions in nat­ur­al envi­ron­men­tal input pro­vide a pac­ing sig­nal for endoge­nous neur­al oscil­la­tions, there­by influ­enc­ing per­cep­tu­al processing.

NB: There is also a press release by the Max Planck Soci­ety on the topic.

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
Editorial Notes Events Posters Publications

Neu­ro­science 2012 Posters and Talks

Dear friends and col­leagues, SfN Participants!

Please go and check out our posters in New Orleans this year.
It’s all hap­pen­ing in the Mon­day (15 Octo­ber) AM posters ses­sion, plus a bit of Tues­day AM, and one talk on mon­day AM as well. Thanks for your support!

TALK MONDAY AM, 10:30
321.11 — Selec­tive atten­tion to audi­to­ry tem­po­ral fea­tures sep­a­rates domain-gen­er­al from tim­ing-spe­cif­ic func­tions
*M. J. HENRY, J. OBLESER;
(in the Nanosym­po­sium 321. “Tim­ing and Tem­po­ral Pro­cess­ing I”)

MONDAY AM POSTER SESSION
366.05/FF7 — Alpha-band activ­i­ty reflects trade-off between tem­po­ral pre­pared­ness and cog­ni­tive load for speech in noise
*A. WILSCH, M. J. HENRY, B. MAESS, J. OBLESER

368.10/II3 — Cor­ti­cal dynam­ics and sub­cor­ti­cal mor­phol­o­gy pre­dict rapid adap­ta­tion to chang­ing spec­tro-tem­po­ral cues
*M. SCHARINGER, M. J. HENRY, J. ERB, J. OBLESER

368.14/II7 — Per­cep­tu­al adap­ta­tion to degrad­ed speech: Tun­ing in cor­ti­cal and sub­cor­ti­cal brain struc­tures
*J. ERB, M. J. HENRY1, F. EISNER, J. OBLESER

368.21/II14 — Slow fre­quen­cy mod­u­la­tion entrains neur­al delta oscil­la­tions and deter­mines human lis­ten­ing behav­ior
M. J. HENRY, *J. OBLESER

TUESDAY AM POSTER SESSION
595.14/CCC5 — With­in-sub­ject alpha pow­er is neg­a­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with sub­jec­tive intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty — A study of degrad­ed word com­pre­hen­sion in MEG.
*C. MCGETTIGAN, S. KOTZ, B. MAESS, S. SCOTT, J. OBLESER

595.23/CCC14 — Func­tion­al lat­er­al­iza­tion of the infe­ri­or frontal gyrus dur­ing sen­tence pro­cess­ing: The influ­ence of struc­tur­al lat­er­al­iza­tion and hand­ed­ness
*L. MEYER, J. OBLESER, A. D. FRIEDERICI

Categories
Clinical relevance Papers Perception Publications Speech

New paper by Mol­ly Hen­ry: Amu­sia diag­no­sis should bet­ter rely on sig­nal detec­tion theory

Sig­nal detec­tion the­o­ry – what helps pre­vent­ing mis­di­ag­noses and false pos­i­tives in gen­er­al can’t be bad for diag­nos­ing Amu­sia either, one would think. Our very own Mol­ly Hen­ry and her for­mer super­vi­sor Devin McAuley now demon­strate in a just-accept­ed paper

Fail­ure to apply sig­nal detec­tion the­o­ry to the Mon­tre­al Bat­tery of Eval­u­a­tion of Amu­sia may mis­di­ag­nose amusia

in Music Per­cep­tion that this is indeed the case:

They show that analy­ses based on con­fi­dence rat­ings and ROC-curves out­per­forms sim­ple per­cent­age cor­rect in diag­nos­ing Amusia.

Here is the abstract, and watch out for the full paper to appear soon:

This arti­cle con­sid­ers a sig­nal detec­tion the­o­ry (SDT) approach to eval­u­a­tion of per­for­mance on the Mon­tre­al Bat­tery of Eval­u­a­tion of Amu­sia (MBEA).

Con­tin­ue read­ing “New paper by Mol­ly Hen­ry: Amu­sia diag­no­sis should bet­ter rely on sig­nal detec­tion theory”
Categories
Auditory Working Memory Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Executive Functions Neural Oscillations Noise-Vocoded Speech Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: Obleser et al., The Jour­nal of Neuroscience

Adverse Lis­ten­ing Con­di­tions and Mem­o­ry Load Dri­ve a Com­mon Alpha Oscil­la­to­ry Network

Whether we are engaged in small talk or try­ing to mem­o­rise a tele­phone num­ber — it is our short-term mem­o­ry that ensures we don’t lose track. But what if the very same mem­o­ry gets addi­tion­al­ly taxed because the words to be remem­bered are hard to understand?

Obleser et al., J Neu­rosci 2012: Alpha oscil­la­tions are enhanced both by mem­o­rised dig­its and by the adverse acoustic con­di­tions that these dig­its had been pre­sent­ed in.
Obleser, J., Woest­mann, M., Hell­bernd, N., Wilsch, A. , Maess, B. (2012). Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon alpha oscil­la­to­ry net­work. Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science. Sep­tem­ber 5, 2012 • 32(36):12376 –12383

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Wöst­mann M, Hell­bernd N, Wilsch A, Maess B. Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon α oscil­la­to­ry net­work. J Neu­rosci. 2012 Sep 5;32(36):12376–83. PMID: 22956828. [Open with Read]