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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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.
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
- PMID: 38040075. [Open with Read]
- PMID: 37989588. [Open with Read]
- PMID: 37640731. [Open with Read]
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
We are delighted to be a founding member of the Hörhanse, a Lübeck consortium of all players researching, teaching, selling, or treating hearing.
Hearing acoustics is a focal point at the Hanse Innovation Campus Lübeck. Unique in Germany is the large number of institutions that work together with renowned players to advance the topic of hearing around the campus: Hearing, acoustics and communication are advanced in their most diverse facets in research projects, study programmes, the nationwide training of hearing care professionals, in the clinical area and through interdisciplinary cooperation.
The founding project partners of HörHanse are the three universities in Lübeck: our host institution University of Lübeck, plus the Lübeck University of Technology, Musikhochschule Lübeck (MHL), as well as the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, the German Hearing Aid Institute (DHI), the Federal Guild of Hearing Aid Acousticians (biha), the Academy of Hearing Aid Acoustics, the State Vocational School for Hearing Aid Acousticians, and the company hear concept.
See the German press release here.
AC’s Malte Wöstmann has guest-edited a special issue on target enhancement and distractor suppression in selective attention together with Viola S. Störmer, MaryAnn P. Noonan, and Dirk van Moorselaar. The collection of articles advances our understanding of the enhancement of target stimuli and the suppression of distraction on various levels of sensory and higher-order cognitive processing. It combines evidence from psychophysics, modelling of behavioral responses, and neuroimaging experiments. In sum, the special issue supports the notion that a comprehensive understanding of selective attention in psychology and neuroscience requires the study of enhancement and suppression, as well as their coordinated interplay.
Check out this new job ad (deadline Dec 16), if you are interested in working on the complexity of high-dimensional neural data (and how to ensure its anonymity) in this exciting new project with many colleagues from Uni Lübeck and companies around us.
This post is especially suited for talents looking for slight changes in their career trajectory (psychologists going data science, IT specialists going neuro/health, or such).
Holding already a doctoral degree is nice but not a strict must-have at this stage.
Hit me up with any questions you might have. — Jonas
Six years in our lab with the ageing, adapting, listening brain and mind center-stage have come to a successful close. Jonas’ ERC Consolidator grant had been granted during the Auditory Cognition lab’s tenure at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig originally, and it has shaped our start and settling-in at the University of Lübeck ever since 2016.
Jonas: “In total almost 500 sessions of behaviour, EEG and fMRI recorded; more than 160 brave Lübeck folks and their brains followed longitudinally over two years; 25 publications put out; and not least two PhDs finished and five postdoc careers kickstarted — I am very grateful for the help of all these people, my host Institution University of Lübeck and the European Research Council (ERC) having made this all happen. Thank you all.”
All data will be or are already publicly available on OSF, and we will update our dedicated “AUDADAPT” project page once the final report is in.