Peo­ple

Cur­rent Members

Jonas Obleser
Group leader

Jonas stud­ied Psy­chol­o­gy with a minor in Sta­tis­tics and got his degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kon­stanz in 2004. After doing research at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don and at the Max Planck Insti­tute in Leipzig, he has held a Chair in Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy and Research Meth­ods at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck since 2016.

Cur­rent­ly, his main inter­ests lie in neur­al dynam­ics, that is, the moment-to-moment brain states as well as more sta­ble brain traits that char­ac­terise our per­cep­tion and behav­iour. An impor­tant ques­tion for Jonas is whether there are fea­tures of neur­al dynam­ics that are espe­cial­ly adap­tive or pro­tec­tive to our health as we get old­er. His pre­ferred mod­el sys­tem still is the lis­ten­ing human being.

Jonas’ research has been sup­port­ed by the ERC (2016–2021), the DFG (2015—), the Max Planck Soci­ety (2010–2015) and var­i­ous part­ners in the hear­ing aid indus­try. Jonas serves as han­dling edi­tor for the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science and eLife.

Jonas loves typog­ra­phy, which can be a pain when you design fig­ures or man­u­scripts with him.

Google Schol­ar • PubMed • jonasobleser.com • ResearcherID

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Mohsen Alavash
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Mohsen’s back­ground is in bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing. He received his PhD in cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Old­en­burg in 2015. Dur­ing his PhD he inves­ti­gat­ed how brain net­works enable us to resolve cog­ni­tive chal­lenges, and why it occa­sion­al­ly fails to do so reflect­ing its capac­i­ty lim­its. To fol­low-up this ques­tion as a post­doc, he has been study­ing the rela­tion between brain net­works and behav­ior in chal­leng­ing lis­ten­ing tasks at the Max-Planck Insti­tute in Leipzig and cur­rent­ly at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck. To this end, he adopts graph-the­o­ret­i­cal net­work analy­sis of the human func­tion­al con­nec­tome built upon the brain hemo­dy­nam­ic respons­es or neu­ronal oscillations.

He loves extract­ing knowl­edge from com­plex data, and is good at mak­ing typos.

Google Schol­ar • PubMed

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Franziska Schara­ta
Lab man­ag­er, Audiologist

 

 

 

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Sarah Tune
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Sarah received a B.A. degree in Lan­guage and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies as well as a PhD in Neu­rolin­guis­tics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mar­burg, Ger­many, where she worked on the neu­ro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­na­tures and the neur­al net­works that sup­port lan­guage comprehension.

She then spent two years as a post­doc­tor­al researcher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine before join­ing the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion research group in 2016.

Her main research inter­ests fol­low the ques­tion of how the human brain achieves the remark­able feat of pro­cess­ing and com­pre­hend­ing lan­guage under at times extreme­ly chal­leng­ing con­di­tions and in the face of age-relat­ed neur­al, cog­ni­tive and sen­so­ry decline. Sarah is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing how dif­fer­ent neur­al and cog­ni­tive strate­gies work togeth­er to enable suc­cess­ful lis­ten­ing. Most of the time you will find her deeply immersed in build­ing ever more com­plex mod­els pre­dict­ing human speech comprehension.

Google Schol­ar • PubMed

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Malte Wöst­mann
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Malte stud­ied Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Osnabrück and fin­ished his Master’s degree in 2012. Form 2012 to 2015, he did his PhD at the Max-Planck Insti­tute for Human Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sci­ences in Leipzig in the research group ‘Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion’, under super­vi­sion of Jonas Obleser. Since 2015, Malte is work­ing as a Post-doc in the Depart­ment of Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck.

His research focus­es on the elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal dynam­ics of human audi­to­ry atten­tion. Malte is cur­rent­ly main­ly inter­est­ed in how the neur­al sys­tem accom­plish­es the sup­pres­sion of dis­tract­ing infor­ma­tion in order to focus atten­tion on rel­e­vant stimuli.

Malte loves sim­plic­i­ty, hav­ing con­cise hypothe­ses, and neat exper­i­men­tal designs.

Google Schol­ar • PubMed

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Hong-Viet Vic­tor Ngo
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Hong-Viet (or Hon­gi) stud­ied Physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kiel but then got cap­tured by the field of Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science, in which he com­plet­ed a PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Lübeck and Tübin­gen in 2014. After­wards, he gath­ered research expe­ri­ence as a Post­doc abroad at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham (UK) and the Don­ders Insti­tute for Brain, Cog­ni­tion and Behav­iour (NL). Since 2020, Hon­gi is back at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck as a Post­doc in the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion group.

His research exam­ines the causal role of brain rhythms on the con­sol­i­da­tion of mem­o­ries dur­ing sleep. To this end, Hon­gi uti­lizes dif­fer­ent non-inva­sive brain stim­u­la­tion tech­niques in real-time exper­i­ments and, of late, mul­ti­vari­ate decod­ing tech­niques. As a stim­u­la­tion afi­ciona­do, he is always on the look­out for new tech­ni­cal advances to nudge the brain and unrav­el or per­haps even ame­lio­rate the func­tion of sleep. 

Google Schol­ar • PubMed

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Léon Franzen
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Léon received an MSc and a PhD in Psychology/Neuroscience from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow where he focused on audio-visu­al per­cep­tu­al deci­sion-mak­ing and the per­cep­tu­al and cog­ni­tive aspects of read­ing in adults with dyslex­ia using EEG and eye-track­ing meth­ods. His research expe­ri­ence fur­ther includes com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling, work­ing mem­o­ry in adults with dyslex­ia, and per­cep­tu­al aspects of con­sumer psy­chol­o­gy. Léon has spent the past two years at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tre­al (Cana­da) explor­ing new visu­al mar­ket­ing tools that could facil­i­tate infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing in adults with dyslex­ia before join­ing the Obleser lab in 2021. Since then he has extend­ed his research inter­ests to per­cep­tion and per­cep­tu­al aber­ran­cies in sub­clin­i­cal (dyslex­ia, schizo­typy), and clin­i­cal pop­u­la­tions (e.g., psy­chosis). He is an Obleser lab col­lab­o­ra­tor while being affil­i­at­ed with the Cen­ter for Inte­gra­tive Psy­chi­a­try (ZIP) at the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tal Schleswig-Hol­stein (UKSH).

In his inves­ti­ga­tions he has used a vari­ety of com­ple­men­tary tech­niques includ­ing EEG, eye-track­ing, gal­van­ic skin response, response times, and com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ling of deci­sion process­es to exam­ine cog­ni­tive deci­sion process­es from var­i­ous angles.

When not immersed in mul­ti­ple projects at once, Léon is an avid bas­ket­ball play­er and coach who loves to see kids and ado­les­cents thrive on the bas­ket­ball court.

Google Schol­ar • PubMed • Research­Gate • OSF

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Niels Kloost­er­man
Post­doc­tor­al researcher

Niels did his Bachelor’s and Research Master’s in Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ams­ter­dam. He then com­plet­ed a Ph.D. in Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science at UvA, after which he moved to the Max Planck Insti­tute in Berlin to work as a post­doc­tor­al researcher. He joined the Oble­ser­lab in 2022 as a lec­tur­er and senior researcher.

Research-wise, Niels is inter­est­ed in our remark­able abil­i­ty to act pur­pose­ful­ly in a com­plex and ever-chang­ing envi­ron­ment. He believes that this cog­ni­tive adapt­abil­i­ty is reflect­ed in the moment-to-moment vari­abil­i­ty of brain activ­i­ty – the more neur­al vari­abil­i­ty, the bet­ter. He is con­stant­ly look­ing for ways to test this idea in EEG, fMRI and eye track­ing stud­ies in younger and old­er healthy per­sons, in both health and psy­chi­atric disease.

In his free time, Niels likes to indulge in dis­cov­er­ing obscure elec­tron­ic music, going hik­ing in the woods, and play­ing old-school video games.

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Markus Kem­per
PhD stu­dent

Markus start­ed his dual appren­tice­ship as a trained hear­ing acousti­cian in 2012, which he suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed in 2015. After­wards, he stud­ied hear­ing acoustics in Lübeck and received his Mas­ter’s degree in 2020. Dur­ing his Mas­ter’s he spent one year at the Sono­va AG in Switzer­land, where he first came into con­tact with his cur­rent research top­ic ‘Lis­ten­ing Effort’ (LE). He joined the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion group in 2020 with­in a col­lab­o­ra­tive project with the Ger­man Insti­tute of Hear­ing Aids.

His research includes the mod­el­ling and decod­ing of LE. He is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing test meth­ods that mea­sure and manip­u­late dif­fer­ent dimen­sions of LE.

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Mar­tin Orf
PhD stu­dent

Mar­tin is a trained hear­ing acousti­cian. He fin­ished his dual appren­tice­ship in 2014.  Based on his appren­tice­ship, he received his B.Sc in hear­ing acoustics in 2017 in Lübeck. From 2017 to 2019, he did his M.Sc in hear­ing tech­nol­o­gy at the uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck. Dur­ing his master´s, he came into con­tact with the audi­to­ry cog­ni­tion group. After his intern­ship and mas­ter the­sis in the Obleser group, he start­ed his PhD inves­ti­gat­ing the mech­a­nism of active ignor­ing in nor­mal and hear­ing-impaired listeners.

He is inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing vir­tu­al and real­is­tic sound sce­nar­ios in the spa­tial lab. Espe­cial­ly, the mech­a­nisms of ignor­ing works in such sce­nar­ios, e.g. cock­tail-par­ty, are of inter­est for him. Based on his back­ground, he is con­cerned in how active ignor­ing works espe­cial­ly in hear­ing-impaired peo­ple and to inves­ti­gate which hear­ing aid fea­tures could be used to facil­i­tate ignor­ing on an engi­neer­ing level.

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Frauke Kraus
PhD stu­dent

Frauke received her B.Sc. in Med­ical Tech­nol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ties of Tübin­gen and Stuttgart and her M.Sc. in Audi­to­ry Tech­nol­o­gy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck. Dur­ing her intern­ship and mas­ter the­sis in the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion group she devel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion for the field of audi­to­ry neuroscience.

Frauke is cur­rent­ly work­ing on her PhD (super­vised by Jonas and Björn Her­rmann, Rot­man Research Insti­tute and Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to). She is inter­est­ed how dif­fer­ent lev­els of atten­tion­al resource recruit­ment affect neur­al oscil­la­tions dur­ing lis­ten­ing, and the extent to which this oscil­la­to­ry activ­i­ty can be used as a mark­er of lis­ten­ing effort.

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Mer­le Schuckart
PhD stu­dent

Mer­le received both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kiel. After hav­ing com­plet­ed her stud­ies in 2022, Mer­le joined the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion Group as a PhD stu­dent with­in a col­lab­o­ra­tive project with the Max-Planck-Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sci­ences in Leipzig. In her project, she inves­ti­gates the influ­ence of domain-gen­er­al net­works on nat­ur­al lan­guage processing.

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Research Assis­tants

Han­nah Hen­rike Schewe

Aiger­im Tuichieva

Niko­lai Dürrbeck

Han­nah Marie Meineke

Egem Gencer

Hele­na Finn

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The Obleser lab 2011—

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Alum­ni

Alex Brand­mey­er — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Google Schol­ar PubMed alexbrandmeyer.com

Felix Deil­mann — Research Sci­en­tist

Lorenz Fiedler — PhD stu­dent
PubMed

Mol­ly Hen­ry — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Google Schol­ar PubMed molly-henry.com

Sophie Herb­st — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed Cog­ni­tion & Brain Dynamics

Björn Her­mann — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed bjoernherrmann.com

Sung-Joo Lim — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed

Michael Plöchl — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed

Math­ias Scharinger — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed inter-word.net

Antje Strauß — PhD stu­dent
PubMed

Anna Wilsch — PhD stu­dent
PubMed

Lea Maria Schmitt — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
PubMed

Julia Erb — PhD stu­dent, Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Google Schol­ar PubMed 

Jen­nifer Klotke — Audi­ol­o­gist

Tro­by Lui — PhD stu­dent

Niko­las Makowka — Lab man­ag­er