Category: Voice

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Clinical relevance Computational Modelling Grants Neural dynamics Voice

Hooray! The Col­lab­o­ra­tive Research Grant “Foun­da­tions of Cir­ca­di­ane Med­i­cine” is here (to stay).

Very hap­py that our lab will be part of the new DFG-fund­ed Col­lab­o­ra­tive Research Cen­tre („Son­der­forschungs­bere­ich“, SFB) Tran­sre­gio 418 between the Char­ité Berlin and Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck, spear­head­ed by chrono­bi­ol­o­gy wiz­ards Achim Kramer (Berlin) and Hen­rik Oster (Lübeck) — “Foun­da­tions of Cir­ca­di­an Med­i­cine”.

A CRC/SFB col­lects about 15 projects, cen­tral funds, and many prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tors from both loca­tions, and will fund a whole new gen­er­a­tion of researchers at the verge of med­i­cine,  neu­ro­science, and sys­tems biol­o­gy for ini­tial­ly 4 years. A CRC/SFB can exist up to 12 years in total.

Our lab will run, joint­ly with Hen­rik Oster, an ambi­tious study on Ket­a­mine and its inter­ac­tions with the inter­nal clock and endocrine (esp. glu­co­cor­ti­coid) sys­tem of the human body, with the ulti­mate goal of under­stand­ing bet­ter how and why Ket­a­mine can exert its ben­e­fi­cial effects on mood.

Stay tuned for more, and con­grat­u­la­tions to all involved!

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception Brain stimulation Clinical relevance Neural Oscillations Papers Psychiatry Psychology Voice

New Review paper on Cir­ca­di­an Rhythms in Audi­to­ry Hal­lu­ci­na­tions and Psy­chosis to come out in “Acta Physiologica”

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.

Categories
Acoustics Familiarity Papers Perception Publications Voice

New Paper in Cog­ni­tion by Lavan, Kre­it­e­wolf et al.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to for­mer Obleser post­doc Jens Kre­it­e­wolf (now at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty) for his new paper in Cog­ni­tion, “Famil­iar­i­ty and task con­text shape the use of acoustic infor­ma­tion in voice iden­ti­ty perception”! 

Togeth­er with our col­leagues from Lon­don, Nadine Lavan and Car­olyn McGet­ti­gan, we took a new approach to test the long­stand­ing the­o­ret­i­cal claim that lis­ten­ers dif­fer in their use of acoustic infor­ma­tion when per­ceiv­ing iden­ti­ty from famil­iar and unfa­mil­iar voic­es. Unlike pre­vi­ous stud­ies that have relat­ed sin­gle acoustic fea­tures to voice iden­ti­ty per­cep­tion, we linked lis­ten­ers’ voice-iden­ti­ty judg­ments to more com­plex acoustic representations—that is, the spec­tral sim­i­lar­i­ty of voice  record­ings (see Fig­ure below).

This new study has a direct link to pop cul­ture (by cap­ti­laz­ing on nat­u­ral­ly-vary­ing voice record­ings tak­en from the famous TV show Break­ing Bad) and chal­lenges tra­di­tion­al pro­pos­als that view famil­iar and unfa­mil­iar voice per­cep­tion as being dis­tinct at all times.

Click here to find out more.