Helen Blank

Helen Blank

Professor of Predictive Cognition

Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum

I am interested in how prior expectations influence human cognition. How does the human brain integrate prior evidence from different sensory sources to make sense of new incoming information? I combine behavioural, neuroimaging, and computational methods to investigate how priors influence speech and person recognition.

I am a Professor of Predictive Cognition at the Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, and the Research Center One Health Ruhr of the University Alliance Ruhr. Additionally, I lead projects within my Emmy Noether group, focusing on Prediction in Communication, and the TRR 289 at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Before that, I was a Marie Curie fellow with Christian Büchel (also at the UKE). During my postdoctoral work with Matt Davis at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, I combined computational modeling and multivariate fMRI measurements to investigate how prior expectations enhance the perception of degraded speech. During my PhD with Katharina von Kriegstein at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, I investigated multisensory integration of faces and voices during human communication.

Interests
  • Predictive processing
  • Speech perception
  • Face and person recognition
  • Computational modelling
  • Multivariate fMRI

Publications

(2026). Hierarchical neural adaptation supports flexible speech perception across rates. PsyArXiv.

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(2026). The Influence of Prior Precision on the Inference of Hidden Causes. bioRxiv (preprint).

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(2026). Human vision sequentially prioritizes expected and unexpected information. bioRxiv (preprint).

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(2026). Pupil dilation reflects prediction errors in learning about others' personality traits. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, nsag060.

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(2026). Sensory sharpening and semantic prediction errors unify competing models of predictive processing in human speech comprehension. PLOS Biology, 24(1), e3003588.

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(2025). Loneliness and social conformity: A predictive processing perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1-3.

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(2025). Protocol to study how expectations guide predictive eye movements and information sampling in humans. STAR Protocols, 6, 103737.

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(2024). Expectations Guide Predictive Eye Movements and Information Sampling During Face Recognition. iScience, 27, 110920.

DOI Preregistration + Open Code + Open Data (Exp. 1) Preregistration + Open Code + Open Data (Exp. 2)

(2024). Opposing serial effects of stimulus and choice in speech perception scale with context variability. iScience, 110611.

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(2024). Prediction error processing and sharpening of expected information across the face-processing hierarchy. Nature Communications, 15, 3407.

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(2024). Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence. Scientific Reports, 14, 8739.

DOI Preregistration Exp. 1 Preregistration Exp. 2 Open Data on OSF

(2024). The pupil dilation response as an indicator of visual cue uncertainty and auditory outcome surprise. European Journal of Neuroscience, 1-16.

DOI Open Data & Open Code on OSF

(2023). Multivariate analysis of brain activity patterns as a tool to understand predictive processes in speech perception. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience.

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(2023). Multivariate functional neuroimaging analyses reveal that strength-dependent face expectations are represented in higher-level face-identity areas. Communications Biology, 6, 135.

DOI Open Data & Open Code on OSF

(2022). Differential auditory and visual phase-locking are observed during audio-visual benefit and silent lip-reading for speech perception. The Journal of Neuroscience.

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(2022). Functional imaging analyses reveal prototype and exemplar representations in a perceptual single-category task. Communications Biology, 5, 896.

DOI Open Data & Open Code on OSF

(2022). Influence of voice properties on vowel perception depends on speaker context. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152, 820-834.

DOI Preregistration & Open Data & Open Code on OSF

(2021). Can expectation suppression be explained by reduced attention to predictable stimuli?. NeuroImage, 231.

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(2020). Altered subcortical emotional salience processing differentiates Parkinson's patients with and without psychotic symptoms. NeuroImage: Clinical, 102277.

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(2019). Structural connectivity between auditory thalamus and primary auditory cortex in developmental dyslexia. The Journal of Neuroscience.

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(2018). Neural Prediction Errors Distinguish Perception and Misperception of Speech. The Journal of Neuroscience, 38(27), 6076-6089.

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(2018). Task-dependent modulation of the visual sensory thalamus assists visual-speech recognition. NeuroImage, 187, 721-734.

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(2016). Prediction errors but not sharpened signals simulate multivoxel fMRI patterns during speech perception. PLOS Biology, 14(11).

DOI Open Data & Open Code on OSF

(2015). How the human brain exchanges information across sensory modalities to recognize other people. Human Brain Mapping, 36(1), 324-339.

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(2014). A review on person-recognition and the brain: Merging evidence from patients and a brain imaging meta-analysis on healthy controls. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 47, 717-734.

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(2013). Mechanisms of enhancing visual-speech recognition by prior auditory information. NeuroImage, 65, 109-118.

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(2013). Temporal characteristics of the influence of punishment on perceptual decision making in the human brain. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33(9), 3939-3952.

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(2011). Direct structural connections between voice- and face-recognition areas. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(36), 12906-12915.

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(2008). Rule-based item design of statistical word problems: A review and first implementation. Psychology Science Quarterly, 50(3), 363.