Cog­ni­tive Modelling

 

The pro­cess­ing of speech sig­nals is cen­tral to suc­cess­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion and social inte­gra­tion, becom­ing espe­cial­ly impor­tant with age. We com­bine lin­guis­tic, cog­ni­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal, and neu­ro­science per­spec­tives to mod­el indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences and devel­op­men­tal tra­jec­to­ries in speech com­pre­hen­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. To achieve this, we uti­lize EEG, fMRI, psy­chophysics, as well as advanced sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods and com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling. Our over­ar­ch­ing goal is to uncov­er the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal, cog­ni­tive, and behav­ioral fac­tors that enable or hin­der suc­cess­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in healthy ageing.

 

Group leader

Dr. phil. Sarah Tune
Depart­ment of Psychology
Uni­ver­si­ty of Luebeck
sarah.tune@uni-luebeck.de
+49 451 3101 3632
2014 – Dr. phil., Neu­rolin­guis­tics, Philipps-Uni­ver­si­ty Marburg

2010 – M.A. Ger­man Lin­guis­tics, Track-Fast PhD-Pro­gramme, Philipps-Uni­ver­si­ty Marburg

2007 – B.A. Lan­guage and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Philipps-Uni­ver­si­ty Marburg

 

Mem­bers

• Andre­ja Sta­j­duhar – PhD candidate
• Friederike von Hoene – stu­dent assistant

 

Alum­ni

Mir­jam Koß­mann – bach­e­lor student
Lisa Unger – bach­e­lor student
Nele Pfitzn­er – bach­e­lor student

 

Projects

How per­cep­tu­al infer­ence changes with age: Behav­iour­al and brain dynam­ics of speech perception 

(3‑year fund­ing by DFG, 2024–2027)

Our per­cep­tu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of noisy and uncer­tain envi­ron­men­tal sig­nals does not only rely on their bot­tom-up sen­so­ry analy­sis but is also crit­i­cal­ly shaped by our acquired knowl­edge about their under­ly­ing caus­es. To com­pen­sate for declin­ing sen­so­ry fideli­ty, old­er adults tend to rely more strong­ly on pri­or knowl­edge, bias­ing their per­cep­tion towards expect­ed sen­so­ry events. While this strat­e­gy may be gen­er­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial, it can turn mal­adap­tive when it is applied inflex­i­bly. How­ev­er, in how far aging impairs the flex­i­ble adap­ta­tion of per­cep­tu­al strate­gies in uncer­tain envi­ron­ments remains insuf­fi­cient­ly under­stood. More­over, we have lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of how adverse effects of age on per­cep­tu­al accu­ra­cy are linked to the com­pu­ta­tion­al and neur­al lev­el. Using the audi­to­ry modal­i­ty and the well-known lex­i­cal bias effect on speech per­cep­tion as a mod­el sys­tem, we here inves­ti­gate how aging affects the flex­i­bil­i­ty with which pri­or knowl­edge and sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion are inte­grat­ed. In cross-sec­tion­al sam­ples of healthy younger and old­er adults, the reli­a­bil­i­ty of sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion and long-term lex­i­cal knowl­edge will be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly altered to test the hypoth­e­sis that old­er age leads to the appli­ca­tion of increas­ing­ly pre­cise per­cep­tu­al pri­ors and reduced belief updat­ing. The project fea­tures an exten­sive behav­iour­al and psy­chophys­i­cal pro­to­col that is com­bined with an estab­lished math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el of Bayesian per­cep­tu­al infer­ence and mod­el-based func­tion­al brain imag­ing to pro­vide an mul­ti-lev­el account of age-relat­ed changes in per­cep­tu­al inference.

 

Select­ed publications

Tune, S., & Obleser, J. (2024) Neur­al atten­tion­al fil­ters and behav­iour­al out­come fol­low inde­pen­dent indi­vid­ual tra­jec­to­ries over the adult life span. eLife, 12, RP92079.

Kraus, F., Tune, S., Obleser, J., & Her­rmann, B. (2023). Neur­al alpha oscil­la­tions and pupil size dif­fer­en­tial­ly index cog­ni­tive load under com­pet­ing audio-visu­al task con­di­tions. Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 43, 4352–4364.

Jessen, S., Obleser, J., & Tune, S. (2021). Neur­al Track­ing in Infants—an Ana­lyt­i­cal Tool for Mul­ti­sen­so­ry Social Pro­cess­ing in Devel­op­ment. Devel­op­men­tal Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, 52, 101034.

Schmitt, L.M., Erb, J., Tune, S., Rysop, A., Hartwigsen, G., Obleser, J. (2021). Pre­dict­ing speech from a cor­ti­cal hier­ar­chy of event-based timescales. Sci­ence Advances, 7 (49), eabi6070.

Alavash, M., Tune, S., Obleser, J. (2021). Dynam­ic large-scale con­nec­tiv­i­ty of intrin­sic neur­al oscil­la­tions sup­port adap­tive lis­ten­ing in chal­leng­ing con­di­tions. PLOS Biol­o­gy, 19 (10), e3001410.

Tune, S., Fiedler, L., Alavash, M., & Obleser, J. (2021). Neur­al atten­tion­al-fil­ter mech­a­nisms of lis­ten­ing suc­cess in mid­dle-aged and old­er indi­vid­u­als. Nature Com­mu­ni­ca­tions 12 (1), 1–14.

Obleser, J. , Kre­it­e­wolf, J, Viel­hauer, R., Lind­ner, f., David, C., Oster, H., & Tune, S. (2021). Cir­ca­di­an fluc­tu­a­tions in glu­co­cor­ti­coid lev­el pre­dict per­cep­tu­al dis­crim­i­na­tion sen­si­tiv­i­ty. iScience, 102345.

Waschke, L., Tune, S., & Obleser, J. (2019). Local cor­ti­cal desyn­chro­niza­tion and pupil-linked arousal dif­fer­en­tial­ly shape brain states for opti­mal sen­so­ry per­for­mance. eLife, 8:e51501.

Alavash, M., Tune, S., & Obleser, J. (2019). Mod­u­lar recon­fig­u­ra­tion of an audi­to­ry con­trol brain net­work sup­ports adap­tive lis­ten­ing behav­ior. PNAS, 16 (2), 660–669.

Tune, S., Wöst­mann, M., & Obleser, J. (2018). Prob­ing the lim­its of alpha pow­er lat­er­al­iza­tion as a neur­al mark­er of selec­tive atten­tion in the mid­dle-aged lis­ten­er. Euro­pean Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, 48 (7), 2537–2550.