Although it seems easy, communicating with another person is an extremely difficult and complex task. In a conversation between two people, there is a continuous stream of dynamic information from several sensory modalities. Embedded into this continuous stream there is information which is important for successful interaction with others; this stream contains not only information about what is said, but also about the identity, character, social status or emotion of the speaker. The task of communication is made even more complex by the need to produce and recognize signals and their underlying meaning online, i.e., without much delay. It is fascinating that our brain can do all this given the sheer speed of communication e.g. the rapidly changing face movements and associated speech sounds. Currently it is impossible to build devices that can communicate as we do. The best computer programs developed to recognize speech or identify people are still far away from the capabilities of our brains.

The question is: How does the brain accomplish fast and robust communication? One way of finding out is to observe the brain and infer what neural mechanisms are used. To do this we perform experiments involving several methods of systems neuroscience (fMRI, sMRI, EEG, MEG, TMS) and different subject groups, i.e. healthy controls, as well as people with selective developmental or acquired deficits (phonagnosia, prosopagnosia, specific language impairment, asperger syndrome). In addition we have recently started to use the experimental findings on neural mechanisms to motivate computational models of human communication. This is done in collaboration with the ‘Modelling of dynamic perception and action’ research group led by Dr. Stefan Kiebel.

Currently, our work focuses on three aspects of auditory and face-to-face communication:

i. Speech recognition: How do we understand what somebody is saying?
ii. Person recognition: How do we recognize and identify others?
iii. How does information from different sensory modalities interact during face-to-face communication?

von Kriegstein K, Smith DRR, Patterson RD, Kiebel SJ, Griffiths TD: How the human brain recognises speech in the context of changing speakers. J Neurosci 2010, 30: 629-38. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Patterson RD, Griffiths TD: Task-dependent modulation of medial geniculate body is behaviorally relevant for speech recognition. Curr Biol 2008, 18: 1855-1859. pdf

Kiebel SJ, von Kriegstein K, Daunizeau J, Friston KJ: Recognising sequences of sequences. PLoS Comp Biol 2009, 5: e1000464. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Smith DRR, Patterson RD, Ives DT, Griffiths TD: Neural representation of auditory size in the human voice and in sounds from other resonant sources. Curr Biol 2007, 17: 1123-1128. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Kleinschmidt A, Giraud AL: Voice recognition and cross-modal responses to familiar speakers' voices in prosopagnosia. Cereb Cortex 2006, 16: 1314-1322. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Giraud AL: Distinct functional substrates along the right superior temporal sulcus for the processing of voices. Neuroimage 2004, 22: 948-955. pdf

Blank H, Anwander A, von Kriegstein K: Direct structural connections between voice- and face-recognition areas. J Neurosci 31, 12906-12915. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Dogan O, Gruter M, Giraud AL, Kell CA, Gruter T et al.: Simulation of talking faces in the human brain improves auditory speech recognition. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2008, 105: 6747-6752. pdf

von Kriegstein K, Giraud AL: Implicit multisensory associations influence voice recognition. PLoS Biol 2006, 4: e326. pdf

Stefan Kiebel MPI-CBS, Leipzig, Germany
Tim Griffiths Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London, UK
Roy Patterson University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Etienne Gaurdrain MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK
Martina and Thomas Grüter www.prosopagnosie.de
Lauren Stewart University of London/Goldsmiths, London, UK
Anne-Lise Giraud Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

If you are interested in working in our group please contact Katharina von Kriegstein.

Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany