Using innovative language, speech, and cognitive tests we improve the quality of intraoperative testing for preservation of brain function.

Christian Kell is in charge of this project that is performed in cooperation with Marcus Czabanka, Department of Neurosurgery, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Speech and language disorders are among the most prevalent developmental disorders in childhood. Approximately 12 % of 5–9-year olds receive according therapy. Despite of therapy, many deficits persist into adulthood, compromising academic success and overall quality of life. Thus, a better understanding of the underlying deficits is of great importance to reduce the burden on the public health system. Our proposal aims to further specify the underlying neurobiological deficits in Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and stuttering. Together, these two deficits account for the majority of speech therapies prescribed. Our focus is on timing, that is, the temporal organization of speech perception and production. It is already known that DLD and stuttering are associated with behavioral timing difficulties. In DLD, these are receptive in nature, found particularly in the auditory processing of temporal modulations. In stuttering, the difficulties are found the domain of production instead. Persons who stutter fail to initiate and maintain a regular speech rhythm. Our central hypothesis is that distinct electrophysiological deficits underlie both types of timing difficulties. Specifically, through multiple magnetoencephalography experiments, we aim to show that deficits in the synchronization of neural oscillations are present in both populations. In DLD, our hypothesis is that there is defective external synchronization of oscillations with acoustic modulations and temporal phonological features. In stuttering, our hypothesis is that defective internal synchronization impairs the cooperation of auditory and motor cortices. Confirmation of these hypotheses would be an important step toward future operationalization of temporal acoustic and linguistic patterns in the context of evidence-based therapy.

Christian Kell collaborates with Lars Meyer, Katrin Neumann, and Joachim Gross in this DFG-funded collaborative project.

In this study, we modulate motor cortex rhythms by means of noninvasive transcranial electric stimulation in parallel to rhythmic auditory stimulation. We investigate whether fixing auditory-motor interactions in people who stutter helps them to speak more fluently.

This project is performed by Christian Kell in cooperation with the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire reConnect at the Institut de l'Audition at the Institut Pasteur Paris together with Sophie Bouton, Peggy Gatignol, and Anne-Lise Giraud.

Using temporal representational similarity, we try to identify the way the left perisylvian cortex codes prosodic and syntactic structure during listening, speaking and when maintaining sentences in short term memory. The direct electrocorticography data are acqiured during awake brain tumor surgery.

Johannes Gehrig is primarily responsible for this project that is run in cooperation with Antje Meyer and Andrea Martin, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.

A prevailing view in neuroscience sees the purpose of the brain in the production of complex movements. The brain is assumed to control the body, and to use sensory feedback of the resulting movements in order to update internal representations of the physical reality. An alternative view describes control as a process that keeps certain parameters of the sensed input in proximity to internal references, by appropriately varying the output. What is controlled is essentially the input, not the output of an organism. While it is difficult to differentiate between these two frameworks generally, we try to challenge several specific predictions derived from these frameworks in the context of manual sound control. To this end, we combine experimental manipulations of task context and sensory feedback with behavioral analyses and fMRI and MEG recordings of neural activity. One prediction concerns the reliance on concurrent sensory feedback during the execution of a short discrete movement. Motor control would predict that such feedback is used to update internal models and should manifest in a change of future behavior. Perceptual control predicts immediate effects on behavior, since, according to this view, behavior is always situated in the current sensory situation. By comparing two different manipulations of concurrent auditory feedback during an auditory reaching paradigm, we hope to shed light on the contribution of on-line and model-based adaptation processes.

This study is performed by Johannes Kasper and is funded by the Polytechnische Gesellschaft Frankfurt.

Using MEG at rest and during different sensorimotor and cognitive tasks, we aim at identifying the mechanisms by which the circadian pacemaker in the human hypothalamus modulates system-specific brain function to elicit diurnal variations in cognition and control of behavior.

This project is run by Tanzeel Khan in cooperation with Georgios Michalareas, CoBIC, and Joerg Stehle, Department of Cellular and Molecular Anatomy, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Using electrocorticography during the transition from coma to wakefulness in the course of awake surgery we study the dynamics of the neural signal, particularly interregional information transfer.

This study is run by Christina Weismantel and performed in collaboration with Bertram Scheller, Wiesbaden, Georgios Michalareas, CoBIC, and Marcus Czabanka, Department of Neurosurgery, Goethe University Frankfurt.

Sophie Bouton, Institut Pasteur Paris

Marcus Czabanka, Department of Neurosurgery, Goethe University Frankfurt

Susanne Fuchs, Leibniz Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Berlin

Peggy Gatignol, Hopital de la Salpetriere Paris

Anne-Lise Giraud, Institut Pasteur Paris

Joachim Gross, Muenster University

Simon Hanslmayr, University of Glasgow

Andrea Martin, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

Antje Meyer, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

Lars Meyer, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig

Georgios Michalareas, CoBIC, Goethe University Frankfurt

Muthuraman Muthuraman, Augsburg University

Katrin Neumann, Muenster University

Pascal Perrier, Université de Grenoble

Elin Runnqvist, Université de Aix Marseille

Wolf Singer, Ernst Struengmann Institute, Frankfurt

Joerg Stehle, Department of Neuroanatomy, Goethe University Frankfurt