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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

 

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Editorial Notes Events Hearing Loss Probandensuche Uncategorized

The “Hörhanse” [hanseat­ic hear­ing] has begun!

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.

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Uncategorized

Guest-edit­ed spe­cial issue in Atten­tion, Per­cep­tion & Psy­chophysics (AP&P)

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.

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Ageing Auditory Neuroscience Editorial Notes Hearing Loss Psychology

New research fund­ing: joint project with WSA

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.

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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.

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Editorial Notes Events Job Offers

New fund­ing: The Hoer­hanse is materialising

Details are to fol­low, but we and our many col­leagues in the Hoer­hanse Lübeck [hanseat­ic hear­ing] are very pleased to have secured sub­stan­tial funds to kick-start our com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cross-fer­til­iza­tion plat­form for hear­ing research, train­ing, and treat­ment here in Lübeck. The project will be host­ed at our part­ner, Hanse Inno­va­tion Cam­pus (HIC) Lübeck. HIC will also be hir­ing soon for this poject. Stay tuned for all the details!

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Job Offers Uncategorized

Job alert in the Obleser lab! We are look­ing for a data sci­en­tist / neuro/ com­put­er scientist

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

 

 

Categories
Memory Papers Publications Sleep

New Paper in PNAS by Ngo et al. enti­tled “Shap­ing overnight con­sol­i­da­tion via slow-oscil­la­tion closed-loop tar­get­ed mem­o­ry reactivation”

Sleep is cen­tral for our abil­i­ty to trans­form new­ly acquired infor­ma­tion into sta­ble mem­o­ry traces. A process hypoth­e­sized to be medi­at­ed by unique brain oscil­la­tions found sole­ly dur­ing sleep, first in fore­most the <1 Hz slow oscil­la­tion, which ini­ti­ate a reac­ti­va­tion of the infor­ma­tion to be con­sol­i­dat­ed. But what is the tem­po­ral rela­tion between sleep slow oscil­la­tions and mem­o­ry reactivation?

Togeth­er with Bern­hard Staresina from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, Hong-Viet V. Ngo recent­ly pub­lished a study uti­liz­ing tar­get­ed mem­o­ry reac­ti­va­tion (TMR): a tech­nique to exter­nal­ly dri­ve reac­ti­va­tion by expos­ing sleep­ing sub­jects to audi­to­ry reminder cues. Using this approach, they com­pared the impact of slow oscil­la­tion phase on the TMR out­come, i.e. they con­trast­ed a cue­ing phase-locked to slow oscil­la­tion peaks (up-states) vs. cues pre­sent­ing dur­ing slow oscil­la­tion troughs (or down-states). Their results show that up-state cue­ing led to a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er for­get­ting than down-state cue­ing. More­over, elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal brain pat­terns reflect­ing reac­ti­vat­ed infor­ma­tion were more pro­nounced after up-state cue­ing. Alto­geth­er these results pro­vide impor­tant insight for the endeav­or to exper­i­men­tal­ly mod­u­late mem­o­ries dur­ing sleep.

You can find the full arti­cle here.