Research

I am investigating how human ears and brains process speech and speech-like sounds. During my time as a PhD student at UCL in London, I have investigated how voice pitch information in target speech and background noise affects the intelligibility of speech signals in normal-hearing listeners and cochlear implant (CI) users. As a post-doc at Heidelberg University Hospital, I studied how voice pitch information is processed in the auditory cortex of normal-hearing listeners and CI users, using a combination of different neuroimaging techniques (fNIRS and M/EEG). At Charité, I am now heading the research branch of the Tinnitus Center, focusing on psychoacoustic and biomarker research. All the resulting papers as well as more recent presentations can be downloaded below. Additionally, some examples of the stimuli used in these papers can be played and downloaded in the Sounds section.


Publications


Steinmetzger, K., Schiele, T., Boecking, B., Avraamides, M., Bamidis, P., Basso, L., Dobel, C., Gilou, S., Ioannou, C., Shimi, A., Vellidou, E., Paraskevopoulos, E. and Mazurek, B. (2024). A survey-based assessment of attitudes and needs regarding tinnitus healthcare among patients and healthcare professionals in Europe. Frontiers in Audiology and Otology 2, 1347283.

Fresemann, M., Boecking, B., Steinmetzger, K., Brueggemann, P., Rose, M., and Mazurek, B. (2024). Aging makes the heart grow fonder: Age influences hearing ability and interactions between psychological phenomena in patients with chronic tinnitus. Journal of Personalized Medicine 14, 23.

Steinmetzger, K. and Rosen, S. (2023). No evidence for a benefit from masker harmonicity in the perception of speech in noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 153, 1064–1072.

Steinmetzger, K., Meinhardt, B., Praetorius, M., Andermann, M., and Rupp, A. (2022). A direct comparison of voice pitch processing in acoustic and electric hearing. NeuroImage: Clinical 36, 103188.

Steinmetzger, K., Megbel, E., Shen, Z., Andermann, M., and Rupp, A. (2022). Cortical activity evoked by voice pitch changes: A combined fNIRS and EEG study. Hearing Research 420, 108483.

Steinmetzger, K., Shen, Z., Riedel, H., and Rupp, A. (2020). Auditory cortex activity measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) appears to be susceptible to masking by cortical blood stealing. Hearing Research 396, 108069.

Praetorius, M. and Steinmetzger, K. (2020). Jenseits der Stille – Hören können mit elektronischen Prothesen. Introductory article in German with English summary: Forschungsmagazin Ruperto Carola 16, 42–49.

Steinmetzger, K., Zaar, J., Relaño-Iborra, H., Rosen, S., and Dau, T. (2019). Predicting the effects of periodicity on the intelligibility of masked speech: an evaluation of different modelling approaches and their limitations. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146, 2562–2576.

Steinmetzger, K. and Rosen, S. (2018). The role of envelope periodicity in the perception of masked speech with simulated and real cochlear implants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 144, 885–896.

Steinmetzger, K. and Rosen, S. (2017). Effects of acoustic periodicity and intelligibility on the neural oscillations in response to speech. Neuropsychologia 95, 173–181.

Steinmetzger, K. and Rosen, S. (2017). Effects of acoustic periodicity, intelligibility, and pre-stimulus alpha power on the event-related potentials in response to speech. Brain and Language 164, 1–8.

Nash, H., Gooch, D., Hulme, C., Mahajan, Y., McArthur, G., Steinmetzger, K., and Snowling, M. (2017). Are the literacy difficulties that characterise developmental dyslexia associated with a failure to integrate letters and speech sounds? Developmental Science 20, e12423.

Morris. D., Steinmetzger, K., and Tøndering, J. (2016). Auditory event-related responses to diphthongs in different attention conditions. Neuroscience Letters 626, 158–163.

Steinmetzger, K. and Rosen, S. (2015). The role of periodicity in perceiving speech in quiet and in background noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 138, 3586–3599.


Recent presentations


Steinmetzger, K. (2024). Untersuchungen des CI-basierten Hörens mittels funktioneller Nahinfrarotspektroskopie (fNIRS). Invited talk given at: DGA 2024 (26th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Audiology), Aalen, Germany, 6–8 March.

Steinmetzger, K. (2024). Investigating speech processing in paediatric and adult CI users using combined fNIRS/EEG measurements. Invited talk given at: Speech in Noise Workshop, Potsdam, Germany, 11–12 January.

Steinmetzger, K. (2023). Interprofessional training for tinnitus researchers and clinicians – need analysis. Talk given at: Tinnitus Center, Jena University Hospital, 6 September.

Steinmetzger, K., Andermann, M., Praetorius, M., and Rupp, A. (2021). Investigating auditory perception in CI users using combined fNIRS-EEG measurements. Invited talk given at: Phonetics & Speech Sciences Group, Department of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, 26 October.

Sounds

Examples of the stimuli used in:
Steinmetzger & Rosen (2023) JASA



Waveforms and narrowband spectrograms of examples of the harmonic and inharmonic maskers with static (upper) and dynamic F0 contours (lower). Click to play: Harmonic – Static F0, Inharmonic (shifted) – Static F0, Inharmonic (rotated) – Static F0, Harmonic – Dynamic F0, Inharmonic (shifted) – Dynamic F0, Inharmonic (rotated) – Dynamic F0.



Examples of the stimuli used in:
Steinmetzger et al. (2022) NeuroImage: Clinical
Steinmetzger et al. (2022) Hearing Research



Waveforms, narrow-band spectrograms, and summary autocorrelation function spectrograms of example stimuli of the five conditions. Click to play: Flat, Rising straight, Falling straight, Rising curved, Falling curved.



Examples of the stimuli used in:
Steinmetzger et al. (2020) Hearing Research



Waveforms, narrow-band spectrograms, and summary autocorrelation function spectrograms of example stimuli of the five conditions. Click to play: Strong pitch – dynamic F0, Strong pitch – static F0, Weak pitch – dynamic F0, Weak pitch – static F0, No pitch.



Examples of the stimuli used in:
Steinmetzger & Rosen (2018) JASA



Cochlear implant simulations: Panel A shows narrow-band spectrograms of one example sentence (The annoying student asks too many questions.), processed to have an aperiodic, mixed, or periodic source excitation. Panel B shows narrow-band spectrograms of examples of the six different maskers. Masker sources were either aperiodic or periodic and masker envelopes were either steady, 10-Hz modulated, or the inverse of the target speech (+MR): aperiodic steady, aperiodic modulated, aperiodic +MR, periodic steady, periodic modulated, and periodic +MR. The +MR masker example is tailored to the example sentence shown above. All stimuli are shown after cochlear implant simulation processing.



Examples of the stimuli used in:
Steinmetzger and Rosen (2017) Brain and Language
Steinmetzger and Rosen (2017) Neuropsychologia



Waveforms, wide-band spectrograms, and F0 contours for one example sentence (Say it slowly but make it ring clear). The (A) unprocessed version of the sentence, the same sentence processed to have an (B) aperiodic source, (C) a mixed source, (D) a periodic source, or (E) a mixed source and spectrally rotated. The four processed conditions (B–E) were all vocoded with eight frequency bands. The unprocessed version of the sentence in panel (A) is shown for the purpose of comparison only.



Examples of the stimuli used in:


Target speech


Waveforms, wide-band spectrograms, and F0 contours for one example sentence (Either mud or dust are found at all times.) processed to have (A) an aperiodic (noise-vocoding, Nx), (B) mixed (Dudley-vocoding, FxNx), or (D) periodic source excitation (F0-vocoding, Fx). Panel (C) shows the unprocessed version of the same sentence for the purpose of comparison. The three processed sentences were all vocoded with eight frequency bands.



Maskers


Waveforms, wide-band spectrograms, and F0 contours of examples of the four maskers used in experiments 2 and 3. (A) An aperiodic steady-state speech-shaped noise, (B) an aperiodic speech-shaped noise with a 10 Hz sinusoidal amplitude modulation, (C) a periodic steady-state harmonic complex with a dynamically varying F0 contour, and (D) a periodic harmonic complex with a dynamically varying F0 contour and a 10 Hz sinusoidal amplitude modulation.

CV

Since June 2023:
Head psychologist: Psychoacoustics
Tinnitus Center
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Nov 2017 – May 2023:
Post-doctoral researcher
Department of Neurology, Section of Biomagnetism
Supervisor: André Rupp
Heidelberg University Hospital

Sep 2012 – Oct 2017:
PhD student/Post-doctoral researcher
Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences
Supervisor: Stuart Rosen
University College London

Oct 2006 – Jul 2012:
Undergrad student
Departments of Psychology
Thesis supervisors: Stefan Koelsch and Martin Rohrmeier
Free University of Berlin & University of California, San Diego

3 June 1986:
Born in Halle an der Saale, Germany/GDR

Contact


Kurt Steinmetzger, Ph.D.
Head psychologist: Psychoacoustics

Tinnitus Center
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Luisenstraße 13, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Email: kurt.steinmetzger[at]charite.de
Phone: +49 30 450555018
Mobile: +49 174 7117661

Playlist

Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps
L'Rain – I Killed Your Dog
Techno Animal – Re-Entry
Pharoah Sanders – Pharoah
Overmono – Good Lies
CS + Kreme – Orange
John Carroll Kirby – My Garden
The Durutti Column – The Return of the Durutti Column
Eddie Chacon – Pleasure, Joy and Happiness
Paul St. Hilaire – Tikiman Vol. 1