Lectures

Sensory Sciences Lecture Series

The Sensory Sciences Lecture Series takes place on the second Thursday of each month at 16:15

Lectures are held by either two scientist from different faculties at FAU in pairs of two times 20 minutes or by guest speakers from around the world, who present their research within a 45 minute lecture. The subsequent discussion can be used to make new contacts, exchange ideas and initiate projects, crossing the boundaries of faculties and bridging scientific disciplines.

The Sensory Sciences Lecture Series is taking place in a hybrid format.

To attend the Sensory Sciences Lecture Series please join us at the Lecture Hall: Henkestr. 91, Room 01.020, 91052 Erlangen

or follow the link to the online meeting:

Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 634 7867 1029
Passcode: 456545

December 12, 2019

FATMA DENIZ   

Gallant Lab in Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

“Cross-modal linguistic representations in the human brain: A naturalistic approach to fMRI”

 

January 16, 2020

BERND EDLER       

International Audio Laboratories (AudioLabs) at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

“Introduction to Models of Spatial Hearing”

TIM ROHE

Universitätsklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Tübingen.

“Multisensory influences on spatial hearing”

 

February 13, 2020

HELENE LOOS

Chair for Aroma and Smell Research at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

“Human chemocommunication”

NICOLAS ROHLEDER

Prof. Chair of Health Psychology at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

“Stress and Health”

 

May 14, 2020

JESSICA FREIHERR

Prof. for Neuroscience of sensory perception at Psychiatry at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

“Neuroscience of multisensory integration”

IRYNA RUDA

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Erlangen.

“An investigation on short-term gustatory memory”

 

July 9, 2020

DANA SCHNEIDER-BLANK

Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst (HAWK), Fakultät Ressourcenmanagement, Göttingen.

“I can smell what you can’t see – Use of dogs in plant quarantine measures – beetle and funghi discriminating dogs.”

UTA KIELAU

Wolfsbetreuerin Schleswig-Holstein, nach §49 LNatSchG Beauftragte des Ministerium für Energiewende, Landwirtschaft, Umwelt, Natur und Digitalisierung.

“Tell me, if it was a wolf!? Scent discriminating dogs as a supplementary tool for the on-site confirmation of wolf (Canis lupus) suspects in Schleswig-Holstein – and the questions about how?”

 

September 10, 2020

LUIS LOPERA & OLIVER AMFT

Chair of Digital Health at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Wearables to Fight COVID-19”

DANIJELA GREGUREC

RLE- Bioelectronics Research Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and Chair of Aroma and Smell Research, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Magnetic nanomaterials for remote control of sensory neurons”

 

October 8, 2020

ANDREAS WIERSCHEM

Prof. für Hochdruckthermofluiddynamik und Rheologie; Chair of Fluid Mechanics; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Pressure-induced crystallization of edible fats – a step towards high-pressure processing of fat-containing products?”

SIMON HAMMANN

J.prof. für Lebensmittelsicherheit und-qualität; Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Approaching the (almost) unfathomable complexity of food lipidomes”

 

November 12, 2020

ROBERT SCHOBER

Chair for Digital Communications (IDC) at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Learning from Nature: Synthetic Molecular Communication”

TILMAN SAUERWALD

Head of the Department of Perceptual Sensor Technology, Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV.

“Techniques for the detection of odorants with sensor systems”

 

December 10, 2020

ANDREAS FÜRST

Chair for Marketing at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

On the Fit of Multiple Sensory Attributes with a Product’s Sensory Function: Exploring the Impact of Partial Attributes – Function Congruence on Product Evaluation

ALEX WILTSCHKO

Senior Research Scientist at Google, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

“Machine Learning for Scent: Learning to Represent the Perceptual Properties of Molecules.”

 

January 14, 2021

JOHAN LUNDSTRÖM

Karolinska Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Stockholm, Sweden.

The role of the human olfactory bulb, in health and disease

 

February 11, 2021

JOACHIM RUTHER

Chair for Chemical Ecology at University of Regensburg.

“Let’s get chemical –sexual communication in parasitic wasps”

 

March 11, 2021

PETER BELL

J.prof. for Digital Humanities with focus art history, Department of Theatre- and Mediascience, Institute for Art History at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Artistic and Artificial Seeing and How to See Odeurs. A Sketch About Art History and Computer Vision”

CARO VERBEEK

Faculty of Humanities, Art and Culture, History, Antiquity at Amsterdam University.

“The museum of smells – presenting volatile heritage”

ANDREA BÜTTNER

Chair of Aroma and Smell Research, Department for Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Executive Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV.

“The scent of time – human chemosensation yesterday, today, tomorrow”

 

April 08, 2021

ANDREAS FEIGENSPAN

Chair for Neurobiology, Department of Biology at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)

“Signal processing at the first synapse of  the visual system.”

 

June 10, 2021

BJÖRN ESKOFIER

Chair for Machine Learning and Data Analytics, Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE) at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Future Health”

 

July 08, 2021

UTA NOPPENEY

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen. The Netherlands.

“Making sense of the senses”

 

September 09, 2021

GARMT DIJKSTERHUIS

Food and Biobased Research at Wageningen University and Research.

“Food related perception and behaviour reserach at Wageningen Food and Biobased Research”

 

October 14, 2021

CORINNA DAWID

Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensory Science, TUM School of Life Sciences, Technical University of Munich.

“Discovery of molecular targets for taste innovations”

 

November 11, 2021

SILVIA BUDDAY

Junior Research Group Leader in the Emmy Noether-Programme (“BRAINIACS – BRAIn mechaNIcs ACross Scales”) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Applied Mechanics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)

“BRAIn mechaNIcs ACross Scales: Linking microstructure, mechanics and pathology”

 

December 9, 2022

CALOGERO M. ODDO

Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), Pisa, and head of the Neuro-Robotic Touch Laboratory at The BioRobotics Institute, Pisa, Italy.

“Somatosensory science and artificial touch engineering: fertile synergies between neuroscience and biorobotics”

 

January 13, 2022

DOMINIK R. BACH

Professor for Cognitive-Computational and Clinical Neuroscience at University College London.

“Using the senses to predict threat”

For many animals including humans, learning to predict threat is crucial for survival. Humans can exploit various sensory percepts to form such predictions. In my talk, I address the biological mechanisms underlying this learning process in the laboratory, using the experimental paradigm of Pavlovian fear conditioning. I focus on the role of primary sensory cortex, above and beyond stimulus perception, in the formation and storage of threat memories. I present data suggesting that primary sensory cortex encodes threat predictions and is indispensable for the consolidation of these predictions.

Dominik R. Bach has a background in psychology, medicine, and mathematics. He and his team are interested in the neurobiology of human threat avoidance, including immediate escape as well as short- and medium-term threat forecasting.

 

February 10, 2022

ELMAR NOETH

Researcher in the Speech Processing and Understanding (SAGI) group at the Pattern Recognition Lab of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“The Language of the Killer Whale: Semantics and Dialects”

 

March 10, 2022

JANINA SEUBERT

Principal Investigator at the Psychology Department at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

“Multisensory flavor perception-odor as the link between food anticipation and consumption”

 

May 12, 2022

DANIEL SENKOWSKI

Head of research division Computational Neuroimaging and of the Multisensory Integration Research Group, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

“Neural signatures of crossmodal illusions and multisensory integration”

 

June 9, 2022

BERNHARD EGGER

Juniorprofessor for Cognitive Computer Vision at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Vision as Inverse Graphics”

HOLGER SCHULZE

Professor for Experimental Otorhinolaryngology at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen.

“Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Tinnitus Development”

 

July 14, 2022

BASIL WAHN

Researcher at Institute for Psychology at Ruhr-University Bochum.

“The Multisensory Brain in a Social World”

 

September 08, 2022

TOBIAS REICHENBACH

Chair of Sensory Neuroengineering, Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Decoding the neural processing of speech”

 

October 13, 2022

LOUISA KULKE

Juniorprofessor for Neurocognitive Developmental Psychology, Institute for Psychology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Development of emotion-driven attention in social situations”

 

November 10, 2022

BARBARA HUBER

Researcher at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena.

“Spices, aromatics and the archaeology of smell”

THOMAS LARSEN

Group Leader at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena.

“Forever chemicals in Arctic marine food webs”

 

January 12, 2023

CHENXU (STELLA) HAO

Researcher at the Chair of Autonomous Systems and Mechatronics, Department of Electrical-Electronic-Communication Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Modelling human-robot interaction”

PATRICK KRAUSS

Researcher at the Neuroscience Group Experimental ENT medicine, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Language processing in artificial neural networks and the brain”

 

January 26, 2023

MEIKE RAMON

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Université de Lausanne.

“Super-Recognizers: What we know, what we don’t know and what we should know”

 

February 09, 2023

DORIS SCHICKER

PhD candidate, Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, Freising.

“Taste it! Repeated Exposure as a Method to Increase Food Acceptance”

ANDREA BÜTTNER

Chair of Aroma and Smell Research, Department for Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Executive Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, Freising.

“Taste of tomorrow, food preferences of future generations: Do we succeed in accompanying them into a sustainable future?? ”

 

March 09, 2023

KATHRIN OHLA

Director R&D, Human Perception & Bioresponse, Firmenich SA, Geneva and Affiliate Professor, Dept. of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University and Private Lecturer, Dept. of Psychology, WWU Münster.

“Taste quality representations predict taste-related behavior”

NIKO BUSCH

Chair for Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Münster.

“The role of lateralized alpha oscillations in visual perception, attention, and short-term memory”

 

April 13, 2023

ANTONELLA DI PIZIO

Unit Head Molecular Modeling, Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (LSB)

“Computer-aided ligand design of taste and odorant receptors.”

PETER GMEINER

Chair of Medical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Development of agonists and antagonists for the bitter taste receptor TAS2R14.”

 

May 11, 2023

FRANNY SPENGLER

Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Biological Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg.

“The smell of social threat – effects of chemosensory stress cues on social cognition”

 

June 22, 2023

GINA ZEH

Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV, Freising.

“From human sensing to sensor technology – teaching olfaction to technical systems”

 

July 06, 2023

WOLFGANG KELSCH

Head of Research Group Developmental Biology of Psychiatric Disorders, Clinic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, ZI Mannheim.

“NoseMaze – an autonomous environment to probe olfaction in rodents”

 

September 14, 2023

VALENTIN RIEDL

Professor for Metabolic and Functional Neuroimaging, Dept. of Neuroradiology, University Hospital Erlangen and Head of Research Group Neuroenergetics of the Human Brain at TU Munich.

“The energetic costs of cognitive and sensory signaling in the human brain”

 

October 12, 2023

KATHARINA DOBS

Head of Visual Cognition & Computational Neuroscience Lab at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen.

“Using deep neural networks to understand why face perception works the way it does”

 

November 09, 2023

VERONICA EGGER

Professor for Neurophysiology, Institute of Zoology, Regensburg University.

“A novel hypothesis on the role of olfactory bulb granule cells: How to dynamically combine 1000 receptor channels”

 

January 11, 2024

ALESSANDRO DEL VECCIO

Juniorprofessor for Neuromuscular Physiology and Neural Interfacing, Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE) at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

“Neural interfacing to regain sensorimotor function after spinal cord injury”

 

March 14, 2024

ROBERT HANUS (with Co-Speaker Pavlína Kyjaková)

Head of Robert Hanus Group on Chemistry of Social Insects at Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.

“What does our body odor reveal about our psychophysiological state?”

 

April 11, 2024

MATHIAS VUKELIC

Head of Team Applied Neurocognitive Systems, Fraunhofer IAO, Stuttgart, Germany.

“Beyond Boundaries: Connecting brains with machines”

 

June 13, 2024

ANJA GÖRITZ

Head of Chair Behavioral Health Technology, University of Augsburg, Germany.

“Biofeedback in Virtual Reality Promotes Wellbeing”

 

July 11, 2024

NATALIA ZARETSKAYA

Assistant Professor and Head of Visual Neuroscience team at University of Graz, Austria.

“Neural basis of visual perception: from sensory input to subjective experience”

 

September 12, 2024

ARNAUD LELEU

Associate Professor at University of Burgundy, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation (CSGA), Dijon, France.

“Having a nose for seeing: Odor-driven visual categorization in the developing human brain”

 

October 10, 2024

ADRIA MARLY

Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08005 Barcelona, Spain.

“Conflict Processing in Multisensory Perception”

 

November 14, 2024

PATRICK BRUNS

Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Germany.

“Adaptivity of multisensory spatial processing across development”

 

December 12, 2024

STEFAN RAMPP

Dept. of Neurosurgery, Dept. of Neuroradiology, University Hospital Erlangen, Germany.

“Oscillatory markers of brain (mal-)function”

 

January 09, 2025

TBD

 

February 13, 2025

TBD

 

March 13, 2025

TBD

 

 

News and upcoming events concerning the Sensory Sciences will be announced on this webpage and via email. If you want to sign up for the Sensory Sciences mailing list, you are interested in presenting your research or  you want to suggest a guest-lecturer, please contact us via email: nadine.goldenstein(at)fau.de.

We are looking forward to new topics and interdisciplinary talks to enhance the Sensory Sciences Community at FAU and beyond.

 

Sensory Sciences Lab

In this interdisciplinary course, advanced students from various disciplines (psychology, medicine, chemistry – molecular science) learn about the interdisciplinary field of Sensory Sciences: how people perceive their environment with different sensory modalities and react to it physically and psychologically. The students therefore apply important topics, theories and methods of the sensory sciences in a research-oriented manner. Students work on small research projects in interdisciplinary teams so that they can contribute and deepen their previous subject-specific perspectives and skills and at the same time engage in an interdisciplinary exchange.

The Sensory Sciences Lab is thaught during the winter term at FAU.