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Prof. Dr. Helen Blank

Room: IB 6/95
Phone: +49 234 32 - 18463
Office hours: Currently by appointment via e-mail
ORCID-iD: 0000-0002-5824-0811
E-Mail

© RUB, Marquard

Research Focus

I am interested in how prior expectations influence our perception during human cognition. How does the human brain integrate prior evidence from different sensory sources to make sense of new incoming information? I combine behavioural, neuroimaging, and computational methods to investigate how priors influence speech and person recognition.

  • Becker, J., Viertler, M., Korn, C. W., & Blank, H. (2024). The pupil dilation response as an indicator of visual cue uncertainty and auditory outcome surprise. The European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(10), 2686–2701. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.16306
  • Garlichs, A., & Blank, H. (2024). Prediction error processing and sharpening of expected information across the face-processing hierarchy. Nature Communications, 15(1), 3407. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47749-9
  • Ufer, C., & Blank, H. (2024). Opposing serial effects of stimulus and choice in speech perception scale with context variability. IScience, 27(9), 110611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.110611
  • Blank, H., Alink, A., & Büchel, C. (2023). Multivariate functional neuroimaging analyses reveal that strength-dependent face expectations are represented in higher-level face-identity areas. Communications Biology, 6(1), 135. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04508-8
  • Ufer, C., & Blank, H. (2023). Multivariate analysis of brain activity patterns as a tool to understand predictive processes in speech perception. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2023.2166679
  • Blank, H., & Bayer, J. (2022). Functional imaging analyses reveal prototype and exemplar representations in a perceptual single-category task. Communications Biology, 5(1), 896. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03858-z
  • Krumbiegel, J., Ufer, C., & Blank, H. (2022). Influence of voice properties on vowel perception depends on speaker context. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(2), 820. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0013363
  • Alink, A., & Blank, H. (2021). Can expectation suppression be explained by reduced attention to predictable stimuli? NeuroImage, 231, 117824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117824
  • Blank, H., Spangenberg, M., & Davis, M. H. (2018). Neural Prediction Errors Distinguish Perception and Misperception of Speech. The Journal of Neuroscience : The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 38(27), 6076–6089. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3258-17.2018
  • Blank, H., & Davis, M. H. (2016). Prediction Errors but Not Sharpened Signals Simulate Multivoxel fMRI Patterns during Speech Perception. PLoS Biology, 14(11), e1002577. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002577