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Tag: Herrmann

Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Psychology

New paper in press: Hen­ry, Her­rmann, & Obleser in PNAS

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Audi­to­ry Cognition’s very own Mol­ly Hen­ry who, with Björn Her­rmann and Jonas Obleser, is about to pub­lish yet anoth­er PNAS paper:

Entrained neur­al oscil­la­tions in mul­ti­ple fre­quen­cy bands co-mod­u­late behavior

Hen­ry MJ, Her­rmann B, & Obleser J. PNAS, in press.

We are very excit­ed about this one, as it harks back to Molly’s 2012 PNAS paper yet ups the ante some­what: How do neur­al oscil­la­tions behave towards a more real­is­ti­cal­ly com­plex mix­ture of acoustic reg­u­lar­i­ties, and how does lis­ten­ing behav­iour change as a func­tion of var­i­ous neur­al entrained phases?

read a short sum­ma­ry here…
Our sen­so­ry envi­ron­ment is teem­ing with com­plex rhyth­mic struc­ture, but how do envi­ron­men­tal rhythms (like those present in speech or music) affect our per­cep­tion? In a human elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how audi­to­ry per­cep­tion is affect­ed when brain rhythms (neur­al oscil­la­tions) syn­chro­nize with the com­plex rhyth­mic struc­ture in syn­thet­ic sounds that pos­sessed rhyth­mic char­ac­ter­is­tics sim­i­lar to speech. We found that neur­al phase in mul­ti­ple fre­quen­cy bands syn­chro­nized to the com­plex stim­u­lus rhythm and inter­act­ed to deter­mine tar­get-detec­tion per­for­mance. Crit­i­cal­ly, the influ­ence of neur­al oscil­la­tions on tar­get-detec­tion per­for­mance was present only for fre­quen­cy bands syn­chro­nized with the rhyth­mic struc­ture of the stim­uli. Our results elu­ci­date how mul­ti­ple fre­quen­cy bands shape the effec­tive neur­al pro­cess­ing of envi­ron­men­tal stimuli.

Stay tuned until after PNAS embar­go has been lifted!

[UPDATE]

PNAS paper is online. Check it out here.

Ref­er­ences

  • Hen­ry MJ1, Her­rmann B2, Obleser J1. Entrained neur­al oscil­la­tions in mul­ti­ple fre­quen­cy bands comod­u­late behav­ior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Oct 14;111(41):14935–40. PMID: 25267634. [Open with Read]
Categories
fMRI Papers Perception Publications

New paper in press: Her­rmann et al in NeuroImage

Dr Björn Her­rmann did it again, and is in press at Neu­roIm­age with Her­rmann, Hen­ry, Scharinger, & Obleser on

Sup­ple­men­tary motor area acti­va­tions pre­dict indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in tem­po­ral-change sen­si­tiv­i­ty and its illu­so­ry distortions

See abstract
Per­cep­tion of time and tem­po­ral change are crit­i­cal for human cog­ni­tion. Yet, per­cep­tion of tem­po­ral change is sus­cep­ti­ble to con­tex­tu­al influ­ences such as changes of a sound’s pitch. Using func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (fMRI), the cur­rent study aimed to inves­ti­gate per­cep­tion of tem­po­ral rate change and pitch-induced illu­so­ry dis­tor­tions. In a 6 × 6 design, human par­tic­i­pants (N=19) lis­tened to fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed sounds (~4 Hz) that var­ied over time in both mod­u­la­tion rate and pitch. Par­tic­i­pants judged the direc­tion of rate change (‘speed­ing up’ vs. ‘slow­ing down’), while ignor­ing changes in pitch. Behav­ioral­ly, rate judg­ments were strong­ly biased by pitch changes: Par­tic­i­pants per­ceived rate to slow down when pitch decreased and to speed up when pitch increased (‘rate-change illu­sion’). The fMRI data revealed acti­va­tion increas­es with increas­ing task dif­fi­cul­ty in pre-SMA, left puta­men, and right IFG/insula. Impor­tant­ly, acti­va­tion in pre-SMA was linked to the per­cep­tu­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty to dis­crim­i­nate rate changes and, togeth­er with the left puta­men, to rel­a­tive reduc­tions in sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to pitch-induced illu­so­ry dis­tor­tions. Right IFG/insula acti­va­tions, how­ev­er, only scaled with task dif­fi­cul­ty. These data offer a dis­tinc­tion between regions whose acti­va­tions scale with per­cep­tu­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty to fea­tures of time (pre-SMA) and those that more gen­er­al­ly sup­port behav­ing in dif­fi­cult lis­ten­ing con­di­tions (IFG/insula). Hence, the data under­score that indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in time per­cep­tion can be relat­ed to dif­fer­ent pat­terns of neu­ro­func­tion­al activation.

Ref­er­ences

  • Her­rmann B1, Hen­ry MJ2, Scharinger M2, Obleser J2. Sup­ple­men­tary motor area acti­va­tions pre­dict indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in tem­po­ral-change sen­si­tiv­i­ty and its illu­so­ry dis­tor­tions. Neu­roim­age. 2014 Jul 23;101C:370–379. PMID: 25064666. [Open with Read]
Categories
Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG fMRI Linguistics Papers Publications

New paper out: Simul­ta­ne­ous fMRI–EEG in audi­to­ry cat­e­go­riza­tion by Scharinger et al.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Obleser lab alum­nus Math­ias Scharinger who this week pub­lished our joint work on simul­ta­ne­ous fMRI–EEG in Fron­tiers in Human Neuroscience!

Simul­ta­ne­ous EEG-fMRI brain sig­na­tures of audi­to­ry cue utilization

by Scharinger, Her­rmann, Nier­haus, & Obleser

See abstract
Opti­mal uti­liza­tion of acoustic cues dur­ing audi­to­ry cat­e­go­riza­tion is a vital skill, par­tic­u­lar­ly when infor­ma­tive cues become occlud­ed or degrad­ed. Con­se­quent­ly, the acoustic envi­ron­ment requires flex­i­ble choos­ing and switch­ing amongst avail­able cues. The present study tar­gets the brain func­tions under­ly­ing such changes in cue uti­liza­tion. Par­tic­i­pants per­formed a cat­e­go­riza­tion task with imme­di­ate feed­back on acoustic stim­uli from two cat­e­gories that var­ied in dura­tion and spec­tral prop­er­ties, while we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly record­ed Blood Oxy­gena­tion Lev­el Depen­dent (BOLD) respons­es in fMRI and elec­troen­cephalo­grams (EEGs). In the first half of the exper­i­ment, cat­e­gories could be best dis­crim­i­nat­ed by spec­tral prop­er­ties. Halfway through the exper­i­ment, spec­tral degra­da­tion ren­dered the stim­u­lus dura­tion the more infor­ma­tive cue. Behav­ioral­ly, degra­da­tion decreased the like­li­hood of uti­liz­ing spec­tral cues. Spec­tral­ly degrad­ing the acoustic sig­nal led to increased alpha pow­er com­pared to non­de­grad­ed stim­uli. The EEG-informed fMRI analy­ses revealed that alpha pow­er cor­re­lat­ed with BOLD changes in infe­ri­or pari­etal cor­tex and right pos­te­ri­or supe­ri­or tem­po­ral gyrus (includ­ing planum tem­po­rale). In both areas, spec­tral degra­da­tion led to a weak­er cou­pling of BOLD response to behav­ioral uti­liza­tion of the spec­tral cue. These data pro­vide con­verg­ing evi­dence from behav­ioral mod­el­ing, elec­tro­phys­i­ol­o­gy, and hemo­dy­nam­ics that (a) increased alpha pow­er medi­ates the inhi­bi­tion of unin­for­ma­tive (here spec­tral) stim­u­lus fea­tures, and that (b) the pari­etal atten­tion net­work sup­ports opti­mal cue uti­liza­tion in audi­to­ry cat­e­go­riza­tion. The results high­light the com­plex cor­ti­cal pro­cess­ing of audi­to­ry cat­e­go­riza­tion under real­is­tic lis­ten­ing chal­lenges.

Ref­er­ences

  • Scharinger M1, Her­rmann B1, Nier­haus T2, Obleser J1. Simul­ta­ne­ous EEG-fMRI brain sig­na­tures of audi­to­ry cue uti­liza­tion. Front Neu­rosci. 2014 Jun 4;8:137. PMID: 24926232. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Perception Auditory Working Memory Events fMRI Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Posters

Come and find us at CNS 2014 in Boston this weekend

The Obleser lab will be pre­sent­ing four posters at this year’s Annu­al Meet­ing of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Soci­ety in Boston.

If you hap­pen to be there, come check us out!

A125 — Hemo­dy­nam­ic sig­na­tures of (mis-)perceiving tem­po­ral change
Her­rmann, Bjoern

C63 — Tem­po­ral pre­dictabil­i­ty atten­u­ates decay in sen­so­ry memory
Wilsch, Anna

D54 — Stim­u­lus dis­crim­inabil­i­ty and pre­dic­tive­ness mod­u­late alpha oscil­la­tions in a per­cep­tu­al­ly demand­ing mem­o­ry task
Wöst­mann, Malte

D130 — Slow acoustic fluc­tu­a­tions entrain low-fre­quen­cy neur­al oscil­la­tions and deter­mine psy­choa­coustic performance
Hen­ry, Molly

Categories
Auditory Working Memory Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Executive Functions Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

New Paper out: Wilsch, Hen­ry, Her­rmann et al.

Quite recent­ly Cere­bral Cor­tex published

Alpha Oscil­la­to­ry Dynam­ics Index Tem­po­ral Expec­ta­tion Ben­e­fits in Work­ing Memory

by Anna Wilsch, Mol­ly J Hen­ry, Björn Her­rmann, Burkhard Maess, and Jonas Obleser.

Check the abstract below or fol­low that link to get the full arti­cle.

Abstract
Enhanced alpha pow­er com­pared with a base­line can reflect states of increased cog­ni­tive load, for exam­ple, when lis­ten­ing to speech in noise. Can knowl­edge about “when” to lis­ten (tem­po­ral expec­ta­tions) poten­tial­ly coun­ter­act cog­ni­tive load and con­comi­tant­ly reduce alpha? The cur­rent mag­ne­toen­cephalog­ra­phy (MEG) exper­i­ment induced cog­ni­tive load using an audi­to­ry delayed-match­ing-to-sam­ple task with 2 syl­la­bles S1 and S2 pre­sent­ed in speech-shaped noise. Tem­po­ral expec­ta­tion about the occur­rence of S1 was manip­u­lat­ed in 3 dif­fer­ent cue con­di­tions: “Neu­tral” (unin­for­ma­tive about forepe­ri­od), “ear­ly-cued” (short forepe­ri­od), and “late-cued” (long forepe­ri­od). Alpha pow­er through­out the tri­al was high­est when the cue was unin­for­ma­tive about the onset time of S1 (neu­tral) and low­est for the late-cued con­di­tion. This alpha-reduc­ing effect of late com­pared with neu­tral cues was most evi­dent dur­ing mem­o­ry reten­tion in noise and orig­i­nat­ed pri­mar­i­ly in the right insu­la. More­over, indi­vid­ual alpha effects dur­ing reten­tion account­ed best for observed indi­vid­ual per­for­mance dif­fer­ences between late-cued and neu­tral con­di­tions, indi­cat­ing a trade­off between allo­ca­tion of neur­al resources and the ben­e­fits drawn from tem­po­ral cues. Over­all, the results indi­cate that tem­po­ral expec­ta­tions can facil­i­tate the encod­ing of speech in noise, and con­comi­tant­ly reduce neur­al mark­ers of cog­ni­tive load.

Ref­er­ences

  • Wilsch A, Hen­ry MJ, Her­rmann B, Maess B, Obleser J. Alpha Oscil­la­to­ry Dynam­ics Index Tem­po­ral Expec­ta­tion Ben­e­fits in Work­ing Mem­o­ry. Cereb Cor­tex. 2014 Jan 31. PMID: 24488943. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Perception EEG / MEG Evoked Activity Papers Perception Publications

New paper in press: Her­rmann, Schlicht­ing, & Obleser, Jour­nal of Neuroscience

Björn Her­rmann has yet anoth­er paper in press in the Jour­nal of Neuroscience!

Dynam­ic Range Adap­ta­tion to Spec­tral Stim­u­lus Sta­tis­tics in Human Audi­to­ry Cortex

The paper is now avail­able online free of charge, and—funnily enough—appeared right on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014.

Screen Shot 2014-01-02 at 14.38.58

Ref­er­ences

  • Her­rmann B, Schlicht­ing N, Obleser J. Dynam­ic range adap­ta­tion to spec­tral stim­u­lus sta­tis­tics in human audi­to­ry cor­tex. J Neu­rosci. 2014 Jan 1;34(1):327–31. PMID: 24381293. [Open with Read]
Categories
Editorial Notes Events Media Publications

SNAP sum­ma­ry and impressions

The SNAP work­shop (Sig­nal and Noise along the Audi­to­ry Path­way) is behind us.

It is safe to say that it has been a great suc­cess. We will care­ful­ly look into the eval­u­a­tion forms you pro­vid­ed, and we will inform here in due course whether and when a 2nd SNAP (poten­tial­ly 2015) is in the making.

Let us thank all of you who made SNAP hap­pen. It turned a fun and suc­cess­ful sci­en­tif­ic year 2013 into an even greater one. Thank you! We hope to see you soon again, somewhere.

Now, here are some impres­sions of SNAP 2013:

P.S. Here you find Jonas’ clos­ing sum­ma­ry notes:

SNAP 2013 ad hoc sum­ma­ry — Jonas Obleser

 

Categories
Editorial Notes Events

SNAP Day 1 is behind us

A great day 1 of the SNAP work­shop is behind us. It could go on for­ev­er, if it would be accord­ing to me.

While Thomas Lun­ner was sad­ly stopped short by new pro­gram com­mit­tee mem­ber, pan-Euro­pean storm ras­cal “Xaver”, 45 oth­ers made it suc­ces­ful­ly to the Max Planck in Leipzig, wit­ness­ing Ingrid John­srude, Torsten Dau, Alexan­dra Ben­dix­en, Maria Chait, Jonathan Peelle, and Peter Lakatos bring­ing the house down.

With the speak­ers’ sup­port, I will poten­tial­ly post a sum­ma­ry pdf of my clos­ing remarks, which I will give tomor­row, for pub­lic access.

As for now, feel free to fol­low Car­olyn McGet­ti­gan and Jonathan Peelle cov­er­ing some of it as SNAP con­tin­ues into day 2 (#SNAPleipzig).

SNAP 2013 Group Photo