Sabine Leske

Guest researcher

Email sabine.leske@imv.uio.no

Room V01-03

Username

Visiting address ŷ�ޱ��_ŷ�ޱ�Ͷע��վ�Ƽ�@sveien 3A Harald Schjelderups hus 0373 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1133 Blindern 0318 Oslo

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Academic interests

Auditory Perception
Temporal Prediction
Neuronal Oscillations
Predictive Processing
EEG and intracranial EEG

Current Research

The aim of my postdoctoral project is to reveal cognitive mechanisms underlying the ability to predict events that evolve over time and are rhythmic in nature. The main goal is to investigate the functional role of neuronal oscillations in auditory and temporal prediction. I examine the pivotal role of the prefrontal and temporal cortex in perceptual prediction via electroencephalography (EEG) in patients with frontal lesions and healthy controls and via intracranial recordings (ECoG or SEEG).

Background

Education

Doctor of Natural Sciences, University of Konstanz, Department of Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology, Institute of Psychology. Doctoral Thesis: Have you heard? Auditory perceptual awareness is predisposed and accompanied by oscillatory activity and network dynamics in the alpha band.

Diplom in Psychology, Technical University of Berlin. Diplom Thesis: Increasing the specificity of a Brain-Computer Interface based on error potentials.

Positions held

2018 Guest researcher, FRONT neurolab, University of Oslo
2016 - 2017 Postdoctoral fellow, Neuroelectromagnetic Oscillations Laboratory (NEMOlab), University of Aarhus, Denmark
2015 - 2016 Researcher, NEMOlab, University of Konstanz, Germany
2012 Guest researcher, CIMeC, University if Trento, Italy
2011 - 2014 Doctoral fellow, OBOBlab, Universitz of Konstanz, Germany
2010 Researcher, CoTeSys-Cluster, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany

Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Endestad, Tor & Solbakk, Anne-Kristin (2022). Attentional modulation of beta-power aligns with the timing of behaviorally relevant rhythmic sounds. Cerebral Cortex.

Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Lubell, James; Leske, Sabine; Funderud, Ingrid; Anais, Llorens; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Meling, Torstein R.; Knight, Robert T. & Endestad, Tor (2021). Monitoring of self-paced action timing and sensory outcomes after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Lubell, James; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Huster, Rene; Meling, Torstein Ragnar; Knight, Robert T; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin & Endestad, Tor (2020). Preservation of Interference Effects in Working Memory After Orbitofrontal Damage. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Leske, S., Dalal, S.S. (2019). Reducing power line noise in EEG and MEG data via spectrum interpolation. NeuroImage.

Frey, J.N., Ruhnau, P., Leske, S., Siegel, M., Braun, C. and Weisz, N. (2016). The Tactile Window to Consciousness is Characterized by Frequency-Specific Integration and Segregation of the Primary Somatosensory Cortex. Scientific Reports.

Leske, S., Ruhnau, P., Frey, J., Lithari, C., M��ller, N., Hartmann, T. and Weisz, N. (2015). Prestimulus Network Intergration of Auditory Cortex Predisposes Near-Threshold Perception Independently of Local Excitability. Cerebral Cortex.

Hauswald, A., ?belacker, T., Leske, S., Weisz, N. (2015). What it means to be Zen: Marked modulations of local and interareal synchronization during open monitoring meditation. NeuroImage.

Leske, S., Tse, A., Oosterhof, N., Hartmann, T., M��ller, N., Keil, J. and Weisz, N. (2014). The strength of alpha and beta oscillations parametrically scale with the strength of an illusory auditory percept. NeuroImage.

M��ller, N., Leske, S., Hartmann, T., Szebeny, S. and Weisz, N. (2014). Listen to yourself: The medial prefrontal cortex modulates auditory alpha power during speech preparation. Cerebral Cortex.

Weisz, N., M��ller, N., Jatzev, S., & Bertrand, O. (2014). Oscillatory alpha modulations in right auditory regions reflect validity of acoustic cues in an auditory spatial attention task. Cerebral Cortex.

Zander, T.O., Lehne, M. Ihme, K., Jatzev, S., Correia, J., Kothe, C., Picht, B., Nijboer, F. (2012). A dry EEG-system for scientific research and brain-computer interfaces. Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics.

Zander, T. O., Jatzev, S. (2012). Context-aware brain-computer interfaces: Exploring the information space of user, technical system and environment. Journal of Neural Engineering.

Book chapters
Zander, T.O., Kothe, C., Jatzev, S., Gaertner, M. (2010). Enhancing Human-Computer Interaction with input from active and passive Brain-Computer Interfaces. In Tan, Nijholt (Eds.): (B+H)CI: The Human in Brain-Computer Interfaces and the Brain in Human-Computer Interactions.

Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Anais, Llorens; Lin, Jack J.; Chang, Edward F. & Brunner, Peter [Show all 12 contributors for this article] (2024). Anatomical registration of intracranial electrodes. Robust model-based localization and deformable smooth brain-shift compensation methods. Journal of Neuroscience Methods. ISSN 0165-0270. 404. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2024.110056.
Asko, Olgerta; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Anais, Llorens & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2024). Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. eLIFE. ISSN 2050-084X. 13. doi: 10.7554/eLife.86386.
Weber, Jan; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Anais, Llorens; Funderud, Ingrid & Leske, Sabine Liliana [Show all 11 contributors for this article] (2024). Ramping dynamics and theta oscillations reflect dissociable signatures during rule-guided human behavior. Nature Communications. ISSN 2041-1723. 15(1). doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-44571-7.
Leske, Henning; Camenisch Gross, Ulrike; Hofer, Silvia; Neidert, Marian Christoph; Leske, Sabine Liliana & Weller, Michael [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2023). MGMT methylation pattern of long-term and short-term survivors of glioblastoma reveals CpGs of the enhancer region to be of high prognostic value. Acta neuropathologica communications. ISSN 2051-5960. 11:139(1), p. 1�C12. doi: 10.1186/s40478-023-01622-w. Full text in Research Archive
Asko, Olgerta; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Anais, Llorens & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2023). Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. bioRxiv. ISSN 2692-8205. doi: 10.1101/2023.01.04.521570.
Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Endestad, Tor & Solbakk, Anne-Kristin (2022). Attentional modulation of beta-power aligns with the timing of behaviorally relevant rhythmic sounds. Cerebral Cortex. ISSN 1047-3211. 33(5), p. 1876�C1894. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac179.
Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Lubell, James; Leske, Sabine; Funderud, Ingrid; Anais, Llorens & Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2021). Monitoring of self-paced action timing and sensory outcomes after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. ISSN 0898-929X. 33(9), p. 1956�C1975. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01733.
Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Lubell, James; Foldal, Maja Dyhre & Leske, Sabine Liliana [Show all 11 contributors for this article] (2020). Preservation of Interference Effects in Working Memory After Orbitofrontal Damage. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. ISSN 1662-5161. 13, p. 1�C15. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00445. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is implicated in multiple cognitive processes, including inhibitory control, context memory, recency judgment, and choice behavior. Despite an emerging understanding of the role of OFC in memory and executive control, its necessity for core working memory (WM) operations remains undefined. Here, we assessed the impact of OFC damage on interference effects in WM using a Recent Probes task based on the Sternberg item-recognition task (1966). Subjects were asked to memorize a set of letters and then indicate whether a probe letter was presented in a particular set. Four conditions were created according to the forthcoming response ("yes"/"no") and the recency of the probe (presented in the previous trial set or not). We compared behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) responses between healthy subjects (n = 14) and patients with bilateral OFC damage (n = 14). Both groups had the same recency pattern of slower reaction time (RT) when the probe was presented in the previous trial but not in the current one, reflecting the proactive interference (PI). The within-group electrophysiological results showed no condition difference during letter encoding and maintenance. In contrast, event-related potentials (ERPs) to probes showed distinct within-group condition effects, and condition by group effects. The response and recency effects for controls occurred within the same time window (300-500 ms after probe onset) and were observed in two distinct spatial groups including right centro-posterior and left frontal electrodes. Both clusters showed ERP differences elicited by the response effect, and one cluster was also sensitive to the recency manipulation. Condition differences for the OFC group involved two different clusters, encompassing only left hemisphere electrodes and occurring during two consecutive time windows (345-463 ms and 565-710 ms). Both clusters were sensitive to the response effect, but no recency effect was found despite the behavioral recency effect. Although the groups had different electrophysiological responses, the maintenance of letters in WM, the evaluation of the context of the probe, and the decision to accept or reject a probed letter were preserved in OFC patients. The results suggest that neural reorganization may contribute to intact recency judgment and response after OFC damage.
Leske, Sabine & Dalal, Sarang S. (2019). Reducing power line noise in EEG and MEG data via spectrum interpolation. NeuroImage. ISSN 1053-8119. 189, p. 763�C776. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.01.026. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in Cristin

Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Asko, Olgerta; Volehaugen, Vegard; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Solli, Sandra & Leske, Sabine Liliana [Show all 9 contributors for this article] (2023). Auditory perception, memory, and predictions.
Volehaugen, Vegard; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Funderud, Ingrid; Llorens, Ana?s; Carvalho, Vinicius Rezende & Endestad, Tor [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2023). Echoes of the unheard: An intracranial electrophysiology study of expectation and attention in auditory omission processing.
Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid & Larsson, P?l Gunnar [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2023). Temporal and precentral brain activity in automatic auditory deviance detection. Evidence from human intracranial EEG recordings.
Asko, Olgerta; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Meling, Torstein Ragnar; Knight, Robert T. & Endestad, Tor [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has a critical role in the generation of high-level expectations.
Solli, Sandra; Doelling, Keith; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Danielsen, Anne & Endestad, Tor (2023). The role of the motor system in predicting accelerating and decelerating auditory rhythms.
Solli, Sandra; Danielsen, Anne; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin & Endestad, Tor (2023). Periodic vs Aperiodic Temporal Predictions: Shared or Separate Mechanisms?
Solli, Sandra; Danielsen, Anne; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin & Endestad, Tor (2023). Both periodic and aperiodic rhythms facilitate perceptual processing.
Solli, Sandra; Danielsen, Anne; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin & Endestad, Tor (2023). Periodic vs Aperiodic Temporal Predictions: Shared or Separate Mechanisms? .
Leske, Sabine Liliana; Endestad, Tor; Volehaugen, Vegard; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar & Solbakk, Anne-Kristin [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). Predicting the Beat Bin �C Beta Oscillations Support Top-Down Prediction of The Temporal Precision of a Beat .
Asko, Olgerta; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Meling, Torstein Ragnar; Knight, Robert T. & Endestad, Tor [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2023). Orbitofrontal lesion impacts formation of auditory expectations. Show summary
Current findings of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) function suggest that this region might have a role in the generation of prediction error signals associated with top-down expectation of upcoming stimuli. We investigated the impact of lesions to the OFC on the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV), an electrophysiological marker of cognitive expectation and time perception. Twelve OFC patients and fifteen healthy controls performed an auditory local-global paradigm while brain electrical activity was recorded. The structural regularities of the tones were controlled at two hierarchical levels by rules defined at a local (i.e., between tones within sequences) level with a short timescale and at a global (i.e., between sequences) level with a longer timescale. At the global level, deviant tone sequences were interspersed among standard tone sequences in a pseudorandom order, rendering some deviant sequences more anticipated than others. We found that healthy controls exhibited CNV build-up before the occurrence of deviant sequences. The CNV drift rate was modulated by the expectancy of deviant sequences (i.e., the higher the expectancy, the higher the CNV drift rate), reflecting their ability to anticipate when a deviant tone sequence would occur. However, patients with OFC lesions did not show CNV drift modulations by the expectancy of the deviant tone sequences, indicating impaired anticipation of these upcoming events. These findings suggest involvement of the OFC in generating auditory expectations based on the contextual and temporal structure of the task.
Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana & Endestad, Tor (2023). Orbitofrontal lesion impacts formation of auditory expectations.
Leske, Sabine Liliana (2022). Phase Amplitude Coupling (PAC). Show summary
An introduction to the Phase Amplitude Coupling (PAC) measure and how it is applied to EEG data (example code in MATLAB). The caveats of the measure are covered and which sanity checks might be necessary.
Leske, Sabine Liliana (2022). Fourier Transform. Show summary
An introduction to the Fourier transform and how it is applied to EEG data. The short time fourier transform (STFT) and different measures (phase and amplitude) derived from it are explained.
Leske, Sabine Liliana (2022). Inter-Trial Coherence (ITC). Show summary
An introduction to the inter-trial coherence measure (ITC) and how it is applied to EEG data (with example code/scripts in MATLAB). Furthermore caveats of the measure are discussed along with it's relation to phase opposition measures.
Asko, Olgerta; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Llorens, Ana?s & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2022). Altered hierarchical auditory predictive processing after lesions to the orbitofrontal cortex. Show summary
In this study, we tested the causal involvement of the OFC in noticing breaches of predictions (i.e., PEs) at different hierarchical levels of task structural complexity. With this aim, we examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) of patients with focal OFC lesions and healthy adults while performing an auditory local-global oddball paradigm. Altogether, we found that after OFC damage, low-level PEs (i.e., processing of stimuli that are unpredicted at the local level) and combined low- and high-level PEs (i.e., processing of stimuli that are unpredicted at both the local and global level) were impacted. However, the processing of standard tones was not affected. We conclude that the OFC may contribute to a top-down process that modulates the deviance detection system in the primary auditory cortices, and may be involved in connecting PEs at lower hierarchical areas with predictions at higher areas. The study sheds new light on the poorly explored deficits of hierarchical auditory prediction in patients with damaged OFC.
Volehaugen, Vegard; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Endestad, Tor; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin & Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar (2022). Violation of rule-based auditory patterns is detected independently of attention.
Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid & Collavini, Santiago [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2022). Human brain network involved in auditory deviance detection. An intracranial EEG study.
Danielsen, Anne & Leske, Sabine Liliana (2022). How the brain tracks the precision of a beat bin - musical, behavioral and neurophysiological perspectives. Show summary
The internal beat or pulse in the listener is not a single point in time, but has a shape and a width and can be described via a probability distribution. This phenomenon has been conceptualized in the beat bin thoery (Danielsen 2010). The internal beat bin of the listener varies systematically with the precision needed in the given musical or sonic context. Anne and Sabine will present behavioral evidence for this phenomenon and a first attempt to reveal the underlying neural mechanism behind the flexible adaptation to the precision of the current beat bin context. They will present effects of acoustic factors on the perceptual center and the beat bin, as well as preliminary results on how neural oscillatory activity might represent a neural mechanism behind this phenomenon.
Danielsen, Anne; C?mara, Guilherme Schmidt; Lartillot, Olivier; Leske, Sabine Liliana & Spiech, Connor (2022). Musical rhythm. Behavioural, computational and neurophysiological perspectives.
Funderud, Ingrid; Danielsen, Anne; Endestad, Tor; Jensenius, Alexander Refsum; Leske, Sabine Liliana & Solbakk, Anne-Kristin (2021). Improving working memory in patents with epilepsy by rhythmic sounds.
Foldal, Maja Dyhre; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Endestad, Tor & Solbakk, Anne-Kristin (2021). Attentional modulation of alpha- and beta oscillations during perception of auditory rhythms.
Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Lubell, James Isaac; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Llorens, Anais & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2021). Auditory prediction and prediction error in self-generated tones.
Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Lubell, James; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Llorens, Ana?s & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 14 contributors for this article] (2019). Human brain network involved in auditory deviance detection: Evidence from intracranial EEG recordings. Show summary
The neural network underlying human auditory deviance detection is not fully understood. To address this, we recorded intracranial EEG from 22 adult patients with drug resistant epilepsy undergoing presurgical monitoring who had depth electrodes implanted in all brain lobes (1193 channels in total). Patients passively heard a stream of bilaterally presented tones while reading. We used the Optimum-1 paradigm, that consisted of 300 standard tones interleaved with 300 randomly presented deviant tones per block. Patients completed between 3 to 10 blocks. Deviant tones differed from standards in: 1) intensity (louder or softer), 2) frequency (higher or lower), 3) sound source location (right or left), 4) a shorter duration, or 5) a silent gap in the middle of the tone (N??t?nen et al., 2004). Electrode coordinates were obtained from coregistered MRI and CT images using iElectrodes toolbox (Blenkmann et al., 2017). Channels were bipolar referenced and high frequency band activity (HFA) analytic amplitude signal was obtained using the Hilbert transform (75-145 Hz). Compared to the baseline period, significant HFA responses to tones in general were observed in 31% of the channels. We used an ANOVA to quantify the HFA response variance across trials that could be explained by the different factors of the stimuli: Intensity, Laterality, Frequency, Duration and Gap. We estimated the amount of explained variance by using ?2 (Siegel et al., 2015). Eighteen % of the channels showed a significant increase of the condition-specific explained variance. Some channels showed condition-specific activations to one particular deviant, while others showed activations to a combination of two or more deviants. The channels showing responses to tones in general and condition-specific effects were mostly observed bilaterally in temporal cortex. Frontal, anterior cingulate, and parietal cortices were also involved to a lesser extent. Our results, in line with the predictive coding framework, reveal that a distributed brain network is involved in auditory processing and deviance detection.
Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Lubell, James; Leske, Sabine Liliana; Llorens, Ana?s & Funderud, Ingrid [Show all 14 contributors for this article] (2019). Human brain network involved in auditory deviance detection: Evidence from intracranial EEG recordings.
Leske, Sabine Liliana; Lubell, James Isaac; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid & Foldal, Maja Dyhre [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2019). Auditory prediction and prediction error in self-generated tones.
Leske, Sabine Liliana; Lubell, James; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar; Llorens, Ana?s; Funderud, Ingrid & Foldal, Maja Dyhre [Show all 13 contributors for this article] (2019). Action-based auditory predictions. Show summary
Sensory consequences of actions are predicted by the brain via an internal forward model to prepare sensory cortical areas, referred to as motor prediction. In a similar vein, the predictive coding framework suggests that perception is based on internal models making predictions about sensory events, based on statistical probabilities of the stimuli. In the current study we investigated action-based sensory predictions. We used a self-paced, two-choice random generation task, infrequently inducing deviant outcomes of voluntary action. Participants repeatedly pressed a right and a left button normatively associated with a 70 ms long 1 kHz and 2 kHz tone, respectively. Occasional deviants occurred, inverting the learned button-tone association. Participants were instructed that their button presses should be random, at a regular but self-paced tempo of one press per 1-2 s, and that they should press both buttons with equal probability. They were informed that the tones are task-irrelevant. We used intracranial EEG (iEEG) data recorded from 10 adult patients with electrodes localized in frontal and temporal lobes. The patients had drug resistant epilepsy and were undergoing presurgical monitoring via implanted stereotactic electrodes. Electrode coordinates and anatomical labels were obtained from coregistered MRI and CT images using iElectrodes toolbox. Initial results indicate that violations of action intentions modulated high frequency band activity (HFA, 75-145 Hz) in distributed brain regions including temporal and prefrontal cortices.
Westner, Britta; Andersen, Lau M?ller; Blenkmann, Alejandro Omar & Leske, Sabine Liliana (2019). RITMO International EEG FieldTrip workshop, Lectures and Hands-on sessions .
Leske, Sabine Liliana (2019). Oscillations and their functional relevance and Experimental design issues in EEG studies investigating oscillations.

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Published Sep. 12, 2018 4:23 PM - Last modified Nov. 3, 2023 12:38 PM

Projects

Research groups

FRONT neurolab