Julia Erb

Short Bio

Julia studied Biomedicine and Neuroscience at the Universities of Würzburg, Paris and Oxford. She completed her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute Leipzig in 2014. From 2014 – 2017 she worked as postdoc at Maastricht University and continued her postdoctoral research at the University of Lübeck from 2018 – 2021. In 2021, she was a hearing researcher at Mimi Hearing Technologies in Berlin where she advanced a hearing testing app and sound personalization. In 2022, she was awarded a FCT assistant researcher fellowship to study auditory hallucinations at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon.

Research interests

Julia’s main interests lie in auditory processing: How are complex natural sounds, such as speech and animal vocalizations, recognized and analyzed in the auditory system to create a coherent percept? Her current research examines auditory hallucinations. The research looks at how both perception and cortical representation of acoustic features may differ in predisposition to auditory hallucinations. To this end, she combines psychoacoustics, brain imaging and computational modelling.

Funding

2021–2027 Sensitivity to speech-relevant acoustic features in the hallucination-prone human brain. Assistant researcher at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal. Individual Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Publications

Published in peer-reviewed journals

10. Schmitt LM, Erb J, Tune S, Rysop A, Hartwigsen G, Obleser J (2021). Pedicting speech from a cortical hierarchy of event-based timescales. Science Advances, 7 (49). doi:10.1126/sciadv.abi6070

9. Wöstmann M, Erb J, Kreitewolf J, & Obleser J (2021). Personality captures dissociations of subjective versus objective hearing in noise. Royal Society Open Science. 8(11):210881. doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210881

8. Erb J, Kreitewolf J, Pinheiro AP, & Obleser J (2020). Aberrant perceptual judgements on speech-relevant acoustic features in hallucination-prone individuals. Schizophrenia Bulletin Open, 1:sgaa059. doi: 10.1093/schizbullopen/sgaa059.

7. Erb J, Schmitt LM, & Obleser J (2020). Temporal selectivity declines in the aging human auditory cortex. Elife, 9:e55300. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55300. *selected for an eLife digest.

6. Erb J, Armendariz M, De Martino F, Goebel R, Vanduffel W, & Formisano E (2019). Homology and specificity of natural sound-encoding in human and monkey auditory cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 29 (9), 3636-3650.

5. Erb J, Ludwig AA, Kunke D, Fuchs M, & Obleser J (2019). Temporal sensitivity predicts six-month post cochlear-implant speech recognition. Ear and Hearing, 40 (1), 27-33.

4. Scharinger M, Henry MJ, Erb J, Meyer L, & Obleser J (2014). Thalamic and parietal brain morphology predicts auditory category learning. Neuropsychologia, 53C, 75-83.

3. Erb J & Obleser J (2013). Upregulation of cognitive control networks in older adults’ speech comprehension. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, Special issue: The effect of hearing loss on neural processing, 7(116), 1-13.

2. Erb J, Henry MJ, Eisner F, & Obleser J (2013). The brain dynamics of rapid perceptual adaptation to adverse listening conditions. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(26), 10688-10697.

1. Erb J, Henry MJ, Eisner F, & Obleser J (2012). Auditory skills and brain morphology predict individual differences in adaptation to degraded speech. Neuropsychologia, 50(9), 2154-2164.

Book Chapters

Obleser J & Erb J (2020). Neural filters for challenging listening situations. In Gazzaniga MS (Ed.), The Cognitive Neurosciences, 6th edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Erb J & Obleser J (2020). Coding of Spectral Information. In Grothe B (Ed.), The Senses Volume II Audition, 2nd edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Monography

Erb J (2014). The neural dynamics of adaptation to degraded speech. Der Fakultät für Biowissenschaften, Pharmazie und Psychologie der Universität Leipzig eingereichte Dissertationsschrift.

Teaching

Auditory Cognition. University of Lübeck, Lecture series for 1st-year Master of Hearing & Audiological Technology /Psychology (2018 - 2020).

Psychophysics. University of Lübeck, elective for Bachelor of Psychology (2019).

Advanced Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience (Psychophysics, MRI and PET). University of Lübeck, lecture for 1st-year Master of Psychology (2018).

Hearing: Basic principles and neurophysiology. Maastricht University, lecture for Maastricht Science Programme (2016).

Functional Neuroanatomy. Maastricht University, 6 weeks tutorial for 2nd–year Bachelor of Psychology (2016).

Perception. Maastricht University, 8 weeks tutorial for 1st–year Bachelor of Psychology (2016).

Methods and Paradigms in Cognitive Neuroscience. Maastricht University, 8 weeks tutorial for 3rd–year Bachelor of Psychology (2015).

Research – How to do it? Maastricht University, 12 weeks research practical for 2nd–year Bachelor of Psychology (2015).