• Final Medical State Exams (Freiburg University, Germany 1997)
• Dr. med. (Freiburg University, Germany, 1998)
• Ph. D. (University College London, 2004)

Uta Noppeney studied medicine and philosophy at Freiburg University, University College London and Johns Hopkins University. Her medical doctoral thesis explored how neuroscientific concepts emerged through interactions between neuroscience, philosophy and psychology at the beginning of the 20th century. After training in neurology at the University Hospital in Aachen, she researched at Magdeburg University and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. Her PhD investigated the neural basis of semantic and language processing using neuroimaging. In 2005, she moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. In 2011, she joined the Computational Neuroscience & Cognitive Robotics Centre at the University of Birmingham. Her current research focuses on multisensory integration and learning.

Uta Noppeney would be interested in supervising students in topics related to multisensory integration and categorization. Knowledge in cognitive neuroscience, prior experience in functional imaging and a strong quantitative background would be an advantage.

Research interests

The goal of the Computational Cognitive Neuroimaging Group is to better understand the neural systems that allow us to acquire, represent and retrieve knowledge about our multisensory environment. We address this central research question from three complementary perspectives: (1) Multisensory Integration, (2) Language and (3) Concept Learning.

Our current research focuses primarily on how the human brain integrates information from multiple senses with prior knowledge to form a coherent and more reliable percept of its environment. Within the cortical hierarchy, multisensory perception emerges in an interactive process with top-down prior information constraining the interpretation of the incoming sensory signals.

Therefore, our approach is to characterize the response properties of individual regions and to establish the functional and effective connectivity between regions. We combine the complementary strengths of psychophysics, functional imaging (fMRI, M/EEG), perturbation approaches such as concurrent TMS-fMRI and neuropsychological studies in patients. To gain a more informed perspective on the underlying computational and neural mechanisms, we combine functional imaging with models of Bayesian inference and learning.

Uta Noppeney serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Neuroscience, NeuroImage and Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.

Conrad V, Vitello MP, Noppeney U (in press) Interactions between apparent motion rivalry in vision and touch. Psychological Science

Lee HL, Noppeney U (2011) Long-term music training tunes how the brain temporally binds signals from multiple senses. PNAS. 108(51): E1441-50.

Giani AS, Ortiz EB, Belardinelli P, Kleiner M, Preissl H, Noppeney U(in press) Using steady-state responses in MEG to study information integration within and across auditory and visual senses. Neuroimage.

Lee HL, Noppeney U (2011) Physical and perceptual factors shape the neural mechanisms that integrate audiovisual signals in speech comprehension. Journal of Neuroscience. 31(31):11338-50.

Maier JX, Lucas M, Noppeney U (2011) Audio-visual synchrony detection in speech processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 37(1):245-56.

Lewis RK, Noppeney U (2010) Audiovisual Synchrony Improves Motion Discrimination via Enhanced Connectivity between Early Visual and Auditory Areas. Journal of Neuroscience. 30(37):12329-39.

Noppeney U, Ostwald D, Werner S (2010) Perceptual decisions formed by accumulation of audiovisual evidence in prefrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. 30(21):7437-46.

Werner S, Noppeney U (2010) Distinct functional contributions of primary sensory and association areas to audiovisual integration in object categorization. Journal of Neuroscience. 30(7):2662-75.

Werner S, Noppeney U (2010) Superadditive responses in superior temporal sulcus predict audiovisual benefits in object categorization. Cerebral Cortex. 20(8):1829-42.

Sadaghiani S, Maier JX, Noppeney U (2009) Naturalistic, metaphoric and linguistic audio-visual interactions. Journal of Neuroscience. 29(20):6490-9.

Noppeney U, Josephs O, Hocking J, Price CJ, Friston KJ (2008) The effect of prior visual information on recognition of sounds and speech. Cerebral Cortex.18(3):598-609.

Noppeney U, Patterson K, Tyler LK, Moss H, Stamatakis EA, Bright P, Mummery C, Price CJ (2007) Temporal lobe lesions and semantic impairment: A comparison of herpes simplex virus encephalitis and semantic dementia. Brain. 130(Pt 4):1138-47

Noppeney U, Friston KJ, Ashburner J, Frackowiak R, Price CJ (2005) Early visual deprivation induces structural plasticity in gray and white matter. Current Biology. 15 (13): R488-90.