The second speaker in our OCC Colloquium series will be Dr. Philipp Ruhnau from the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNS) at the University of Salzburg. Dr. Ruhnau uses magnetoencephalography (MEG) and stimulation techniques to investigate oscillatory activity patterns and their functional relevance for conscious perception.

• Time: December 9, 2015 (Wed), 16:15 h
• Location: Lecture Hall, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, Building A9

We are glad to welcome Prof. Dr. Niko Busch as a new OCC member. Prof. Busch has just been appointed as Professor of Experimental Psychology (Allgemeine Psychologie II) at the Institute of Psychology. He uses different brain-imaging methods, and especially electroencephalography (EEG), to investigate the role of neuronal oscillations in perception and cognition.

Holger Heppe joined our group of OCC PhD students. He is currently working on his thesis at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences entitled "Impact of physical exercise on visual-spatial skills" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Karen Zentgraf. Additional members of the PhD Committee are Prof. Dr. Eric Eils (Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences, WWU) and Prof. Dr. Mathias Hegele (University of Gießen). Welcome!

Music expertise and audiovisual integration
OCC Student Alumnus Dr. Evangelos Paraskevopoulos and supervisor Prof. Dr. Christo Pantev from the Institute of Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis (IBB) and their team published the paper "Musical expertise is related to altered functional connectivity during audiovisual integration" in the renowned international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Reading musical scores requires the integration of visual, auditory, and motor skills, but the brain's functional networks involved in audiovisual integration remain unclear. To uncover the effects of short- and long-term music training on brain networks tied to audiovisual integration, Paraskevopoulos et al. recruited 26 people around 25 years of age, of whom 13 were students at a conservatory in Muenster, Germany and the rest had received no comparable music training. Using magnetoencephalography and whole-brain connectivity analysis, the authors uncovered the cortical networks tied to multisensory perception and identification of audiovisual inconsistency based on the participants' reactions to musical notations and scores that included violations of a cardinal rule in music reading, namely that the higher the position of a circle in the note, the higher the pitch of the tone. Brain connectivity across far-flung cortical areas and processing efficiency were enhanced in musicians, compared with non-musicians. Whereas non-musicians relied primarily on the processing of visual cues, musicians largely deployed a dense network tied to the processing of auditory cues to identify auditory pattern violations. According to the authors, cognitive expertise, such as that gained by music training, can reorganize brain networks, providing support for the human brain's responsiveness to training.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1510662112

Alwina Stein has succesfully defended her PhD Thesis entitled "Inhibition-induced plasticity via auditory stimulation and its effects on tinnitus – a translational approach". The experiments that were part of her thesis were performed at the Institute for Biomagnetism and Biosignalanalysis (IBB) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Christo Pantev. The thesis was co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Pienie Zwitserlood and Prof. Dr. Jens Bölte (both Institute of Psychology). For the investigation of tinnitus-related cortical activity, Alwina Stein employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) as main method. Congratulations Alwina and all the best for the future!

As our first guest speaker in the OCC Colloquium series for the winter semester 2015/2016, we are very happy to welcome Dr. Floris der Lange from the Donders Insitute in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Dr. de Lange is internationally renowned for his research on the interaction between expectation, prediction, and attention. He uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of these phenomena on the sensory and cognitive level.

• Time: October 28, 2015 (Wed), 16:15 h
• Location: Hörsaal Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Albert-Schweitzer-Campus 1, A9