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Tag: Obleser

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Auditory Neuroscience Auditory Speech Processing EEG / MEG Neural Oscillations Neural Phase Papers Publications Speech

New Paper in PNAS: Hen­ry & Obleser [Updat­ed]

Our new paper on neur­al entrain­ment with spec­tral fluc­tu­a­tions, and its effects on near-thresh­old audi­to­ry per­cep­tion is now online in the “ear­ly edi­tion” of PNAS:

Hen­ry, MJ & Obleser, J (in press):

Fre­quen­cy mod­u­la­tion entrains slow neur­al oscil­la­tions and opti­mizes human lis­ten­ing behavior

Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca (PNAS)


Here is the abstract:

The human abil­i­ty to con­tin­u­ous­ly track dynam­ic envi­ron­men­tal stim­uli, in par­tic­u­lar speech, is pro­posed to prof­it from “entrain­ment” of endoge­nous neur­al oscil­la­tions, which involves phase reor­ga­ni­za­tion such that “opti­mal” phase comes into line with tem­po­ral­ly expect­ed crit­i­cal events, result­ing in improved pro­cess­ing. The cur­rent exper­i­ment goes beyond pre­vi­ous work in this domain by address­ing two thus far unan­swered ques­tions. First, how gen­er­al is neur­al entrain­ment to envi­ron­men­tal rhythms: Can neur­al oscil­la­tions be entrained by tem­po­ral dynam­ics of ongo­ing rhyth­mic stim­uli with­out abrupt onsets? Sec­ond, does neur­al entrain­ment opti­mize per­for­mance of the per­cep­tu­al sys­tem: Does human audi­to­ry per­cep­tion ben­e­fit from neur­al phase reor­ga­ni­za­tion? In a human elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy study, lis­ten­ers detect­ed short gaps dis­trib­uted uni­form­ly with respect to the phase angle of a 3‑Hz fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed stim­u­lus. Lis­ten­ers’ abil­i­ty to detect gaps in the fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed sound was not uni­form­ly dis­trib­uted in time, but clus­tered in cer­tain pre­ferred phas­es of the mod­u­la­tion. More­over, the opti­mal stim­u­lus phase was indi­vid­u­al­ly deter­mined by the neur­al delta oscil­la­tion entrained by the stim­u­lus. Final­ly, delta phase pre­dict­ed behav­ior bet­ter than stim­u­lus phase or the event-relat­ed poten­tial after the gap. This study demon­strates behav­ioral ben­e­fits of phase realign­ment in response to fre­quen­cy-mod­u­lat­ed audi­to­ry stim­uli, over­all sug­gest­ing that fre­quen­cy fluc­tu­a­tions in nat­ur­al envi­ron­men­tal input pro­vide a pac­ing sig­nal for endoge­nous neur­al oscil­la­tions, there­by influ­enc­ing per­cep­tu­al processing.

NB: There is also a press release by the Max Planck Soci­ety on the topic.

Ref­er­ences

  • Hen­ry MJ, Obleser J. Fre­quen­cy mod­u­la­tion entrains slow neur­al oscil­la­tions and opti­mizes human lis­ten­ing behav­ior. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Dec 4;109(49):20095–100. PMID: 23151506. [Open with Read]
Categories
Editorial Notes Events Posters Publications

Neu­ro­science 2012 Posters and Talks

Dear friends and col­leagues, SfN Participants!

Please go and check out our posters in New Orleans this year.
It’s all hap­pen­ing in the Mon­day (15 Octo­ber) AM posters ses­sion, plus a bit of Tues­day AM, and one talk on mon­day AM as well. Thanks for your support!

TALK MONDAY AM, 10:30
321.11 — Selec­tive atten­tion to audi­to­ry tem­po­ral fea­tures sep­a­rates domain-gen­er­al from tim­ing-spe­cif­ic func­tions
*M. J. HENRY, J. OBLESER;
(in the Nanosym­po­sium 321. “Tim­ing and Tem­po­ral Pro­cess­ing I”)

MONDAY AM POSTER SESSION
366.05/FF7 — Alpha-band activ­i­ty reflects trade-off between tem­po­ral pre­pared­ness and cog­ni­tive load for speech in noise
*A. WILSCH, M. J. HENRY, B. MAESS, J. OBLESER

368.10/II3 — Cor­ti­cal dynam­ics and sub­cor­ti­cal mor­phol­o­gy pre­dict rapid adap­ta­tion to chang­ing spec­tro-tem­po­ral cues
*M. SCHARINGER, M. J. HENRY, J. ERB, J. OBLESER

368.14/II7 — Per­cep­tu­al adap­ta­tion to degrad­ed speech: Tun­ing in cor­ti­cal and sub­cor­ti­cal brain struc­tures
*J. ERB, M. J. HENRY1, F. EISNER, J. OBLESER

368.21/II14 — Slow fre­quen­cy mod­u­la­tion entrains neur­al delta oscil­la­tions and deter­mines human lis­ten­ing behav­ior
M. J. HENRY, *J. OBLESER

TUESDAY AM POSTER SESSION
595.14/CCC5 — With­in-sub­ject alpha pow­er is neg­a­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with sub­jec­tive intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty — A study of degrad­ed word com­pre­hen­sion in MEG.
*C. MCGETTIGAN, S. KOTZ, B. MAESS, S. SCOTT, J. OBLESER

595.23/CCC14 — Func­tion­al lat­er­al­iza­tion of the infe­ri­or frontal gyrus dur­ing sen­tence pro­cess­ing: The influ­ence of struc­tur­al lat­er­al­iza­tion and hand­ed­ness
*L. MEYER, J. OBLESER, A. D. FRIEDERICI

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

New paper out: Obleser et al., The Jour­nal of Neuroscience

Adverse Lis­ten­ing Con­di­tions and Mem­o­ry Load Dri­ve a Com­mon Alpha Oscil­la­to­ry Network

Whether we are engaged in small talk or try­ing to mem­o­rise a tele­phone num­ber — it is our short-term mem­o­ry that ensures we don’t lose track. But what if the very same mem­o­ry gets addi­tion­al­ly taxed because the words to be remem­bered are hard to understand?

Obleser et al., J Neu­rosci 2012: Alpha oscil­la­tions are enhanced both by mem­o­rised dig­its and by the adverse acoustic con­di­tions that these dig­its had been pre­sent­ed in.
Obleser, J., Woest­mann, M., Hell­bernd, N., Wilsch, A. , Maess, B. (2012). Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon alpha oscil­la­to­ry net­work. Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science. Sep­tem­ber 5, 2012 • 32(36):12376 –12383

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Wöst­mann M, Hell­bernd N, Wilsch A, Maess B. Adverse lis­ten­ing con­di­tions and mem­o­ry load dri­ve a com­mon α oscil­la­to­ry net­work. J Neu­rosci. 2012 Sep 5;32(36):12376–83. PMID: 22956828. [Open with Read]
Categories
Neural Oscillations Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: “Don’t be enslaved by the enve­lope” – Com­ment on Giraud & Poep­pel (2012)

Today appears a com­ment / opin­ion arti­cle, with a tad bit of fresh evi­dence from our lab, that is main­ly a reply to Anne-Lise Giraud and David Poeppel’s recent “per­spec­tive” arti­cle on Neur­al oscil­la­tions in speech.

We loved that arti­cle, obvi­ous­ly, but after the ini­tial excite­ment, a few con­cerns stuck with us. In essence, the prob­lems are (i) how to define theta for the pur­pos­es of analysing speech com­pre­hen­sion process­es, (ii) not to over­ly focus on the speech enve­lope (i.e., not to neglect spec­tral / fine-struc­ture aspects of speech), and (iii) the unsolved chicken–egg prob­lem of how neur­al entrain­ment and speech intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty real­ly relate to each other.

But read for your­self (It’s pleas­ant­ly short!).

Ref­er­ences

  • Obleser J, Her­rmann B, Hen­ry MJ. Neur­al Oscil­la­tions in Speech: Don’t be Enslaved by the Enve­lope. Front Hum Neu­rosci. 2012 Aug 31;6:250. PMID: 22969717. [Open with Read]
Categories
EEG / MEG Evoked Activity Linguistics Papers Perception Place of Articulation Features Publications Speech

New paper in press — Scharinger et al., PLOS ONE [Update]

We are hap­py that our paper

A Sparse Neur­al Code for Some Speech Sounds but Not for Others

is sched­uled for pub­li­ca­tion in PLOS ONE on July 16th, 2012.

This is also our first paper in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alexan­dra Ben­dix­en from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leipzig.

The research report­ed in this arti­cle pro­vides an exten­sion of the pre­dic­tive cod­ing frame­work onto speech sounds and assumes that audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing uses pre­dic­tions that are not only derived from ongo­ing con­tex­tu­al updates, but also from long-term mem­o­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tions — neur­al codes — of speech sounds. Using the Ger­man min­i­mal pair [lats]/[laks] (bib/salmon) in a pas­sive-odd­ball design, we find the expect­ed Mis­match Neg­a­tiv­i­ty (MMN) asym­me­try that is com­pat­i­ble with a pre­dic­tive cod­ing frame­work, but also with lin­guis­tic under­spec­i­fi­ca­tion theory.

[Update]

Paper is avail­able here.

Ref­er­ences

  • Scharinger M, Ben­dix­en A, Tru­jil­lo-Bar­reto NJ, Obleser J. A sparse neur­al code for some speech sounds but not for oth­ers. PLoS One. 2012;7(7):e40953. PMID: 22815876. [Open with Read]
Categories
Degraded Acoustics fMRI Noise-Vocoded Speech Papers Publications Speech

New paper in press: Erb et al., Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia [Update]

I am very proud to announce our first paper that was entire­ly planned, con­duct­ed, analysed and writ­ten up since our group has been in exis­tence. Julia joined me as the first PhD stu­dent in Decem­ber 2010, and has since been busy doing awe­some work. Check out her first paper!

Audi­to­ry skills and brain mor­phol­o­gy pre­dict indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in adap­ta­tion to degrad­ed speech

Noise-vocod­ed speech is a spec­tral­ly high­ly degrad­ed sig­nal, but it pre­serves the tem­po­ral enve­lope of speech. Lis­ten­ers vary con­sid­er­ably in their abil­i­ty to adapt to this degrad­ed speech sig­nal. Here, we hypoth­e­sized that indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in adap­ta­tion to vocod­ed speech should be pre­dictable by non-speech audi­to­ry, cog­ni­tive, and neu­roanatom­i­cal fac­tors. We test­ed eigh­teen nor­mal-hear­ing par­tic­i­pants in a short-term vocod­ed speech-learn­ing par­a­digm (lis­ten­ing to 100 4- band-vocod­ed sen­tences). Non-speech audi­to­ry skills were assessed using ampli­tude mod­u­la­tion (AM) rate dis­crim­i­na­tion, where mod­u­la­tion rates were cen­tered on the speech-rel­e­vant rate of 4 Hz. Work­ing mem­o­ry capac­i­ties were eval­u­at­ed, and struc­tur­al MRI scans were exam­ined for anatom­i­cal pre­dic­tors of vocod­ed speech learn­ing using vox­el-based mor­phom­e­try. Lis­ten­ers who learned faster to under­stand degrad­ed speech showed small­er thresh­olds in the AM dis­crim­i­na­tion task. Anatom­i­cal brain scans revealed that faster learn­ers had increased vol­ume in the left thal­a­mus (pul­v­inar). These results sug­gest that adap­ta­tion to vocod­ed speech ben­e­fits from indi­vid­ual AM dis­crim­i­na­tion skills. This abil­i­ty to adjust to degrad­ed speech is fur­ther­more reflect­ed anatom­i­cal­ly in an increased vol­ume in an area of the thal­a­mus, which is strong­ly con­nect­ed to the audi­to­ry and pre­frontal cor­tex. Thus, indi­vid­ual audi­to­ry skills that are not speech-spe­cif­ic and left thal­a­mus gray mat­ter vol­ume can pre­dict how quick­ly a lis­ten­er adapts to degrad­ed speech. Please be in touch with Julia Erb if you are inter­est­ed in a preprint as soon as we get hold of the final, type­set manuscript.

[Update#1]: Julia has also pub­lished a blog post on her work.

[Update#2] Paper is avail­able here.

Ref­er­ences

  • Erb J, Hen­ry MJ, Eis­ner F, Obleser J. Audi­to­ry skills and brain mor­phol­o­gy pre­dict indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in adap­ta­tion to degrad­ed speech. Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia. 2012 Jul;50(9):2154–64. PMID: 22609577. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Cortex Auditory Speech Processing fMRI Papers Publications Speech

New paper out: McGet­ti­gan et al., Neuropsychologia


Last years’s lab guest and long-time col­lab­o­ra­tor Car­olyn McGet­ti­gan has put out anoth­er one:

Speech com­pre­hen­sion aid­ed by mul­ti­ple modal­i­ties: Behav­iour­al and neur­al interactions

I had the plea­sure to be involved ini­tial­ly, when Car­olyn con­ceived a lot of this, and when things came togeth­er in the end. Car­olyn nice­ly demon­strates how vary­ing audio and visu­al clar­i­ty comes togeth­er with the seman­tic ben­e­fits a lis­ten­er can get from the famous Kalikow SPIN (speech in noise) sen­tences. The data high­light pos­te­ri­or STS and the fusiform gyrus as sites for con­ver­gence of audi­to­ry, visu­al and lin­guis­tic information.

Check it out!

Ref­er­ences

  • McGet­ti­gan C, Faulkn­er A, Altarel­li I, Obleser J, Baver­stock H, Scott SK. Speech com­pre­hen­sion aid­ed by mul­ti­ple modal­i­ties: behav­iour­al and neur­al inter­ac­tions. Neu­ropsy­cholo­gia. 2012 Apr;50(5):762–76. PMID: 22266262. [Open with Read]
Categories
Auditory Working Memory Degraded Acoustics EEG / MEG Events Executive Functions Neural Oscillations Posters Publications

Fur­ther posters at SFN / Neu­ro­science 2011

In addi­tion to the excit­ing con­so­nan­tal mis­match neg­a­tiv­i­ty work Math­ias and Alexan­dra will be show­ing (TUESDAY AM ses­sion, posters UU10 and UU11), we will have the fol­low­ing posters this year. Come by!

Chris Petkov and I are show­ing our brand new data in the TUESDAY PM ses­sion, poster LL14.

I myself will be pre­sent­ing in the WEDNESDAY AM ses­sion, XX15 – more alpha oscil­la­tions in work­ing mem­o­ry under speech degradation.

Final­ly, I also have the plea­sure to be a co-author on Sarah Jessen’s, who is show­ing très cool mul­ti­modal inte­gra­tion data on voic­es and bod­ies under noisy con­di­tions in the WEDNESDAY PM ses­sion, XX15.