Cognitive and Biological Psychology

News

[2020-12-03] According to a study by Ioannidis et al. ( Ioannidis JPA, Boyack KW, Baas J (2020) Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators. PLoS Biol 18(10): e3000918) Erich Schröger belongs to the worldwide most cited scientists (top 2 promille) across all disciplines.
[2018-09-01] Professor Robert P. O’Shea from Southern Cross University in Australia began as a Guest Scientist. Professor O’Shea is interested in how our brains produce the experiences of the things we see and in the history and philosophy of science and psychology.
[2018-12-15] Der Beitrag von Nicole Wetzel und Erich Schröger "On the development of auditory distraction: A review" aus dem Jahr 2014 gehört zu den meist zitierten der Zeitschrift PsyCh Journal.
[2018-08-29] Eine neue Studie von Maria Stuckenberg, C. Nayak, B. Meyer, C. Völker, V. Hohmann und A. Bendixen mit dem Titel "Age effects on concurrent speech segregation by onset asynchrony" wurde zur Veröffentlichung in der Zeitschrift Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research akzeptiert. Die Studie zeigt, dass junge (18-33 Jahre) und ältere (55-74 Jahre) Zuhörer gleichermaßen den akustischen Hinweisreiz "Onset asynchrony" nutzen, um gleichzeitig präsentierte Sprachsignale zu segregieren.
[2018-07-02] Interview (Multimedia, Audio) mit Erich Schröger von MDR Aktuell zu dessen Aufnahme in die Liste der 50 einflussreichsten aktiven Psychologen.
[2018-05-11] Eine neue Studie von Nicole Wetzel, Florian Scharf und Andreas Widmann mit dem Titel "Can't ignore – distraction by task-irrelevant sounds in early and middle childhood" wurde zur Veröffentlichung in der Zeitschrift Child Development akzeptiert. Die Studie beschreibt die erhebliche Entwicklung der Aufmerksamkeitskontrolle in der frühen Kindheit.
[2018-04-03] Eine neue Studie von Florian Scharf und Steffen Nestler mit dem Titel "Principles behind variance misallocation in temporal exploratory factor analysis for ERP data: Insights from an inter-factor covariance decomposition" wurde zur Veröffentlichung im International Journal of Psychophysiology akzeptiert. Darin wird gezeigt, dass bei der Anwendung von explorativen Faktorenanalysen die topographische Überlappung der Faktoren zu substantiell korrelierten Faktoren führt, weshalb orthogonale Rotationsmethoden vermieden werden sollten.
[2018-01-23] Eine neue Studie von Andreas Widmann, Erich Schröger und Nicole Wetzel wurde zur Veröffentlichung in Biological Psychology akzeptiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich die Beiträge des parasympathischen und sympathischen Nervensystems zur Pupillenantwort mittels Hauptkomponentenanalyse trennen lassen. Emotionale Erregung spiegelt sich spezifisch in der sympathischen Antwort (Pressemitteilung).
[2018-01-08] Erich Schröger ist als einer der weltweit 50 einflussreichsten aktiven Psychologen gelistet.
[2017-04-11] Prof Dr. Erich Schröger wurde zum Prorektor für Forschung und Nachwuchsförderung der Universität Leipzig gewählt (Pressemitteilung).
[2017-12-01]Dr. Sabine Grimm holds the position of a Deputy Professor for "Structure and function of cognitive systems" at the Institute of Physics of the Chemnitz University of Technology from January 2017 until December 2017.
[2017-05-04] New publication by Maria Bader, Erich Schröger, and Sabine Grimm in PLoS One with the title: How regularity representations of short sound patterns that are based on relative or absolute pitch information establish over time: An EEG study. The study shows that sensory memory traces for short melodic patterns establish with a similar, fast time course, but probably not to the same strength for pattern repetitions based on absolute or relative pitch structure.
[2017-04-11] Prof Dr. Erich Schröger was elected as the Vice-Rector for Research and Young Academics of the University of Leipzig (press release).
[2017-04-05] New text book chapter by Prof. Dr. Alexandra Bendixen (TU Chemnitz) and Prof. Dr. Erich Schröger Bendixen, A. & Schröger, E. (2017). Auditive Informationsverarbeitung. In J. Müsseler & M. Rieger (Hrsg.), Allgemeine Psychologie (pp. 51-73). Heidelberg: Springer Verlag; electronic copy available in UB library).
New publication by Bradley Jack, Andreas Widmann, Robert O'Shea, Erich Schröger, and Urte Roeber in Psychophysiology: Brain activity from stimuli that are not perceived: Visual mismatch negativity during binocular rivalry suppression. It was shown that visual deviants which are not consciously perceived as they were presented to the suppressed eye during binocular rivalry still elicit visual MMN.
Results of a new study in Frontiers in Psychology by Nicole Wetzel, Erich Schröger, and Andreas Widmann indicate that separate mechanisms underlying the processing of novel environmental and pitch-deviant sounds develop with different time courses and that these mechanisms develop considerably within a few years in middle childhood.
„Attention and prediction in human audition: a lesson from cognitive psychophysiology“ by Erich Schröger, Anna Marzecová and Iria SanMiguel belongs to the 10 most popular papers of 2015 of the European Journal of Neuroscience.
Stipendium der G.-A.-Lienert-Stiftung für Anna Marzecová für einen Forschungsaufenthalt im "Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience Lab" an der Universität Ghent, Belgien (Sept to Okt 2016).
Dr. Annekathrin Weise received a DAAD return scholarship for a research stay at the division Cognitive and Biological Psychology (chair: Prof. Erich Schröger), University of Leipzig, Germany (Jun to Nov 2016)
A new research report by Steinberg et al (2016) in Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research provides evidence that phonotactic violations in speech stimuli are processed differently depending on the immediate phonological context they are embedded in. (doi:10.1044/2015_JSLHR-H-15-0062)
Two new commentaries in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods by Burkhard Maess, Erich Schröger, and Andreas Widmann discuss common recommendations for high-pass filtering and baseline correction in M/EEG data analysis (DOIs: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2015.12.003 and 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2016.01.016).
New cooperation funded by the DAAD: Murdoch University, Perth, topic "Seeing without awareness" (Prof. Dr. E. Schröger and Prof. Dr. R. O´Shea) and University Newcastle (Prof. Dr. Schröger and Prof. Dr. Todd)
New commentary by Anna Marzecová in Cortex’s discussion forum on bilingual advantages in executive control: Bilingual advantages in executive control - Loch Ness Monster case or an instance of neural plasticity? The topic has been discussed in Neuroskeptic’s blog post.
Another research project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Topic: "Factors affecting involuntary attention in the childhood and adulthood" (Dr. Nicole Wetzel).
New Special Issue edited by Erich Schröger, Sonja Kotz and Iria SanMiguel in Brain Research (2015): Predictive and Attentive Processing in Perception and Action. Prediction and attention are fundamental brain functions in the service of perception and action. The special issue includes current research in these fields and especially considers interactions between them. It tries to bridge concepts on prediction and attention and to reveal common functional principles of perception and action.
New publication by Nicole Wetzel, David Buttelmann, Andy Schieler, and Andreas Widmann in Developmental Psychobiology (2015): Infant and adult pupil dilation in response to unexpected sounds. The study reported for the first time that unexpected and task-irrelevant noise and environmental sounds elicited a significant pupil dilation response in infants and adults that differ between age groups in dependence from the nature of the eliciting sound. The study demonstrates that the pupillometry is a promising, economic, and sensitive tool for the investigation of involuntary attention mechanisms in preverbal children.
Cortex Special Issue on Predictions in speech and language processing. The quasi-regular nature of the human speech signal affords its examination in terms of temporal expectancies (estimating when the next speech sound/word is likely to occur) and content-based predictions (anticipating the most likely speech sound/word in a given context). The Cortex Special Issue highlights these intrinsically predictive properties in human speech and language, and uncovers some of the underlying neural mechanisms that enable the robust and efficient language comprehension, even in adverse perceptual situations or under conditions of damages to the language network (i.e. in patient populations). Some results are particularly discussed in the predictive coding framework of brain functions. Editorial and special issue editing together with Alessandro Tavano: Tavano, A. & Scharinger, M. Prediction in speech and language processing. Cortex Volume 68, p. 1-7.Special Issue
A DFG grant was given to Dr. Nicole Wetzel und Professor Dr. Erich Schröger to support the organisation of scientific events: "Error Signals from the Brain - 7th Mismatch Negativity Conference (MMN2015).
Alexandra Bendixen, Iria SanMiguel and Erich Schröger wrote the most cited International Journal of Psychophysiology article (Bendixen et al., 2012.,Early electrophysiological indicators for predictive processing in audition: A review. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 83(2), 120-131, cf. article Three of the four most cited articles from this Journal were part of a Special Issue edited by Juanita Todd, Erich Schröger and István Winkler in 2012, which was entitled "Predictive information processing in the brain: Principles, neural mechanisms and models".
New publication by Erich Schröger, Anna Marzecová, and Iria SanMiguel in European Journal of Neuroscience: Attention and prediction in human audition: A lesson from cognitive psychophysiology. The article reviews electrophysiological findings on the effects of attention and prediction in audition. Mechanisms of these two top-down influences are discussed and integrated, following the predictive coding framework.
An Erasmus Mundus Exchange Student Network Scholarship was given to Dr. Annekathrin Weise for a ten-months research stay at Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, Canada (Dr. Bernhard Ross).
MMN 2015 Conference Error Signals from the brain in Leipzig September 8th-11th
Two additional DFG-funded projects were granted: Auditory cognition (Dr. Sabine Grimm) and Speech processing (Dr. Mathias Scharinger).
In line with the international research topic „Its irrelevant for the task but interesting! – How children process and attend to task-irrelevant information“ up-to-date research results related to the distractibility in children were summarised from different perspectives (Dr. Nicole Wetzel).
Strategies, best practices and recommendations for the selection and reporting of EEG filter parameters were introduced. Limitations, and alternatives to filtering were discussed (Andreas Widmann).
This study used EEG to investigate auditory N1 suppression in an audiovisual paradigm during the perception of dynamic emotional and non-emotional facial and vocal expressions. We showed that audiovisual integration as indexed by an N1 suppression in the audiovisual compared with the unisensory auditory conditions is modulated by emotional content, suggesting an advantage for emotional information during bimodal processing. (Jenny Kokinous)