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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. 

 

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Computational Modelling EEG / MEG Events Uncategorized

Joint lab meet­ing with the Don­ner lab

Last week, we ven­tured over to Ham­burg (a mere 65 km south­east of Lübeck) and spent a won­der­ful day with our friend­ly hosts, the Tobias Don­ner lab, at the Uni­ver­si­ty Clin­ic Eppen­dorf (UKE).

It was very inspir­ing to iden­ti­fy and dis­cuss the many com­mon threads that dri­ve our join inter­est in per­cep­tion and deci­sion-mak­ing, in fus­ing com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling of behav­iour with M/EEG and fMRI data, and in neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal con­cepts of arousal or excitation/inhibition bal­ance. Stay tuned for more to come from this excit­ing joint ven­ture with our local neigh­bours! Thanks, Tobias and team, for hav­ing us.

PS. I hope you like my attempts of shoot­ing a prop­er “boomer selfie”.

Obleser lab boomer selfie

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Auf deutsch Editorial Notes Media Uncategorized Website

Der neue Hör-Newslet­ter ist da

Unsere diesjährige Aus­gabe des Hör-Newslet­ter mit eini­gen Neuigkeit­en aus Lübeck und aus unserem Forschungsla­bor ist da. Viel Spaß beim Stöbern!

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Wel­come

We wel­come new PhD stu­dents in the Obleser lab: Andre­ja Sta­j­duhar and Max Schulz.

Andre­ja did her Bachelor’s at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, Cana­da, where she focused on how indi­vid­u­als per­ceive faces under dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, she focused on under­stand­ing how dif­fer­ences in auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal mem­o­ry per­for­mance may map onto neu­roanatom­i­cal dif­fer­ences in the brain. Now, togeth­er with Dr. Sarah Tune, she is inves­ti­gat­ing how per­cep­tu­al infer­ence changes with age.

Max did his M. Sc. in Biol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leipzig. Dur­ing his DFG-fund­ed PhD project under super­vi­sion of Malte Wöst­mann, he is focus­ing on ques­tions about cap­ture and sup­pres­sion in audi­to­ry attention.

 

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Auditory Neuroscience Editorial Notes Grants Uncategorized

Jonas elect­ed and appoint­ed as DFG review panelist

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.

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Auditory Neuroscience Editorial Notes Events Psychology Uncategorized

Oble­ser­lab retreat Jan­u­ary 2024

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.

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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

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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