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.
Category: Auditory Neuroscience
Now out in eLife, Lisa Reisinger and Nathan Weisz (Salzburg) with a diverse team including myself (J.O.) show, using state of the art decoding models and a rigorous approach of internal, pre-registered replication, that people living with tinnitus (a chronic and often very distressing auditory “phantom percept”) show altered patterns of predictive auditory processing. Check it out!
The eLife editorial assessment reads like this: “This important work presents two studies on predictive processes in subjects with and without tinnitus. The evidence supporting the authors’ claims is compelling, as their second study serves as an independent replication of the first. Rigorous matching between study groups was performed, especially in the second study, increasing the probability that the identified differences in predictive processing can truly be attributed to the presence of tinnitus. This work will be of interest to researchers, especially neuroscientists, in the tinnitus field.”
Jonas Obleser has been elected by the German scientific community as one of the new members of the so-called “Fachkollegium” (a select, standing group of review panelists) of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in the field of systemic and cognitive neuroscience.
This is an honourable, non-profit additional task that primarily involves suggesting fundings decisions for grant proposals in the field of neuroscience. Here’s to four exciting if work-intense years.
A few weeks ago, we had two scientifically very intense days where we retreated to Cornelius Borck’s lovely University outpost in the pittoresque city center of Lübeck (thanks for having us!) and re-visited and re-thought out current and future research agenda. Thanks to all current (and future!) lab members who contributed so thoughtfully to this. I enjoyed it immensely. After a few years without proper lab retreats and now the pandemic behind us, we will certainly do more of this later in the year.
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!
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
I am happy and honoured that one of the leading hearing aid developers and manufacturers, Widex Sivantos Audiology (WSA), has agreed with University of Lübeck to fund 3 more exciting years of research at the Obleser lab! We will be jointly looking at the intricacies of how ageing listeners navigate a noisy world and its communication challenges.
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.