Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Martin Meyer

 

Main Goals, Keywords

Investigations of cerebral mechanisms during auditory processing and speech perception, long-term and short-term plasticity in the human auditory system, functional neuroanatomy of the peri-sylvian cortex, sign language, hemispheric asymmetry, intertwining of auditory-motor circuits in the human brain, neurocognitive processing of sub- and suprasegmental auditory cues (prosody and rhythm), representation of vocal utterances in the mammalian brain, “silent” functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Group Members

1 senior research fellow, 6 PhD students

Previous and Current Research

The ability to perceive and produce speech allows human beings a complex form of communication, which makes us special amongst other creatures. For more then one century neuropsychology has been attempting to systematically identify, describe, and map the neural mechanisms of speech perception and production.

Besides the well documented knowledge about a privileged role of the left hemisphere for speech functions it has recently been demonstrated that the right hemisphere also plays an important role in speech and nonspeech processing.

Recent neuroscience models and empirical evidence (also from my group) suggest that the processing of rapidly changing acoustic information in the speech signal, and not the linguistic stimuli per se, may account for the functional and structural lateralisation of speech in the human brain. Accordingly, the right auditory cortex is preferentially driven by slowly changing suprasegmental auditory cues constituting melodic and rhythmic modulation in both speech and music. In the recent past we have published a series of brain imaging studies (EEG, fMRI) that elucidated the nature of functional lateralization in spoken language and vocal utterances (human laughter, acoustic aspects of voicing).

Functional asymmetry of computational preferences in the human auditory system. The upper image shows the compartments that constitute the superior temporal region (blue = planum polare, red = transverse temporal gyrus, green = planum temporale, yellow = superior temporal sulcus). This ensemble of regions has been shown to accommodate the major auditory functions. The lower illustration depicts the differential preferences of the two hemispheres with the left posterior auditory-related cortex being preferentially driven by rapidly changing cues and the right posterior auditory-related cortex being more amenable to slowly changing acoustic cues (illustration published in Meyer, Zeitschrift für Neuropsychologie 2008); with courtesy of David Poeppel and Torsten Wüstenberg)

Future Projects

Besides the continuation of our studies on brain function, my group presently aims at identifying structural asymmetries and the specifically designed macroscopic architecture in the human auditory cortex that complement the evidence of functional asymmetries during auditory processing and speech perception provided so far.

Techniques and Equipment

Electrophysiological and hemodynamic neuroimaging, electrical source estimation (LORETA), magnetic resonance imaging based morphometry (diffusion tensor imaging, in-vivo morphometry)

Selected Publications

• Oechslin, M., Meyer, M. & Jancke, L. Absolute pitch - functional evidence of speech-relevant auditory acuity. Cerebral Cortex 20, 447-455 (2010).
  
• Zaehle, T., Jancke, L., Herrmann, C., Meyer, M. Pre-attentive spectro-temporal feature processing in the human auditory system. Brain Topography 22, 97-108 (2009).
  
• Sandmann, P., Eichele, T., Buechler, M., Debener, S., Jancke, L., Dillier, N., Hugdahl, K., Meyer, M. Evaluation of evoked potentials to dyadic tones after cochlear implantation. Brain 132, 1967-1979 (2009).
  

Selected Lectures, Seminars, Colloquia

Regular teaching: Foundations of Biological Psychology, Neurocognition of speech and hearing, Neuropsycholocigal assessment

Miscellaneous

UBS-Habilitationspreis (habilitation award), dies academicus, University of Zurich, 2010.
Permanent Guest Professor, Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Klagenfurt.
Scientific Advisory Board: Dybuster - Defeating Dyslexia

Funding

Swiss National Foundation

URL

http://www.neurowissenschaft.ch/mmeyer