Brain Products Young Scientist Award 2024 presented to Dr. Nina Coy

by Stefanie Rudrich
Head of Marketing (Brain Products)

The Brain Products Young Scientist Award is presented each year to recognize a young researcher’s outstanding publication in the field of EEG-based psychophysiological research. The winner is chosen by an independent jury, which is appointed by the managing board of the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie und ihre Anwendung” (DGPA). At Brain Products, we want to have a positive impact on the fields of psychology and neuroscience and thereby award and celebrate excellent EEG research in these domains. By continuously recognizing young scientists, we aim to support the next generation of researchers and their scientific discoveries

This year’s award ceremony took place on June 1st at the 49th Annual Conference “Psychologie & Gehirn” (PuG) in Hamburg (Germany), where Dr. Nina Coy was presented as the Young Scientist Award winner 2024. Nina is a postdoctoral researcher in the Cognitive Systems Lab at Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany and received a trophy, a certificate and a cheque for 1000€.

In her awarded publication, “Conditional deviant repetition in the oddball paradigm modulates processing at the level of P3a but not MMN“, she and her co-authors present a new paradigm that significantly expands our knowledge of the brain correlates of auditory prediction. The support of hearing by prediction processes has a long history in EEG research; however, the interpretation of EEG data has been complicated so far due to the fact that various processes overlap in time. To overcome this problem, Nina and her colleagues use a temporal-exploratory factor analysis approach. This enables them to decompose the brain reactions in an additive linear manner and distinguish the processing stages involved on the basis of the separated components. In combination with an innovative experimental design, their work provides new insights into the formation of predictive models in the auditory system.

For more details, see the original abstract (below) and don’t miss out on reading the full publication.

Brain Products Young Scientist Award 2024 presented to Dr. Nina Coy

Brain Products Young Scientist Award Winner 2024: Dr. Nina Coy

Abstract

Coy, N., Bendixen, A., Grimm, S., Roeber, U., & Schröger, E. (2024).
Conditional deviant repetition in the oddball paradigm modulates processing at the level of P3a but not MMN.
Psychophysiology, 61(6), e14545. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14545

The auditory system has an amazing ability to rapidly encode auditory regularities. Evidence comes from the popular oddball paradigm, in which frequent (standard) sounds are occasionally exchanged for rare deviant sounds, which then elicit signs of prediction error based on their unexpectedness (e.g., MMN and P3a). Here, we examine the widely neglected characteristics of deviants being bearers of predictive information themselves; naive participants listened to sound sequences constructed according to a new, modified version of the oddball paradigm including two types of deviants that followed diametrically opposed rules: one deviant sound occurred mostly in pairs (repetition rule), the other deviant sound occurred mostly in isolation (non-repetition rule). Due to this manipulation, the sound following a first deviant (either the same deviant or a standard) was either predictable or unpredictable based on its conditional probability associated with the preceding deviant sound. Our behavioral results from an active deviant detection task replicate previous findings that deviant repetition rules (based on conditional probability) can be extracted when behaviorally relevant. Our electrophysiological findings obtained in a passive listening setting indicate that conditional probability also translates into differential processing at the P3a level. However, MMN was confined to global deviants and was not sensitive to conditional probability. This suggests that higher-level processing concerned with stimulus selection and/or evaluation (reflected in P3a) but not lower-level sensory processing (reflected in MMN) considers rarely encountered rules.

On behalf of the whole Brain Products team, congratulations, Nina, on winning our Young Scientist Award 2024. We will continue to follow your research and wish you all the best for your future!

Most recent articles

References

Coy, N., Bendixen, A., Grimm, S., Roeber, U., & Schröger, E. (2024).
Conditional deviant repetition in the oddball paradigm modulates processing at the level of P3a but not MMN.
Psychophysiology, 61(6), e14545. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14545

Official Press Release (in German) of the Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany)
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/tu/pressestelle/aktuell/12461