Helen Blank

Prof. Dr. Helen Blank is a Professor of Predictive Cognition at Ruhr University Bochum, affiliated with the Faculty of Psychology and the Research Department of Neuroscience. She leads the Prediction in Communication Lab within the Research Center One Health Ruhr of the University Alliance Ruhr. Her research focuses on understanding how the brain integrates sensory signals with prior expectations, particularly in speech and face perception under uncertainty.

Her research interests center on predictive processing in human cognition, exploring how expectations shape perception through mechanisms like predictive coding. She investigates how humans adapt to changing contexts, learn from experiences, and generalize prior knowledge to new sensory inputs. Her work spans multiple domains including speech perception, face recognition, and the neural mechanisms underlying these processes.

Prof. Blank's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on prediction error processing, serial effects in perception, and how expectations guide information sampling. Her work combines computational modeling with advanced neuroimaging techniques, revealing how prior expectations influence sensory processing across different modalities.

She is actively mentoring students and postdocs, as evidenced by numerous recent publications with junior researchers. Her lab has access to significant infrastructure including a 3T human MRI, High-Performance-Computing Cluster, and multiple laboratories for electrophysiological and behavioral studies.