About

Since 2025, I have been a postdoctoral researcher in the Music Perception Team. My research focuses on human perception and processing of music, with particular interest in psychoacoustics and multimodal perception. I aim to better understand how listeners interpret and organize complex auditory environments, utilizing musical contexts as a primary case example.

My doctoral research examined the psychoacoustic determinants of salience in musical scene analysis, investigating why certain sounds become perceptually prominent within musical mixtures. In addition to my core research, I contributed to several interdisciplinary projects, including the live music experiment The Golden Ear Challenge and the development of an experimental setup combining auditory and vibrotactile stimulation.

My academic path combines a long-standing passion for music with experience in media production, audiology, and hearing research. Before pursuing my PhD, I studied music recording and production at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf (B.Eng.) and worked in the event technology and television industry. Subsequently, I completed a master’s degree in Hearing Technology and Audiology at the University of Oldenburg and joined Kai Siedenburg’s former Music Processing and Perception Lab as a doctoral researcher. I am pleased to continue this work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Music Perception Lab.

Research Interests

• Music perception and cognition
• Multimodal perception
• Psychoacoustics

Education

• Dr. rer. nat. in Music Perception, University of Oldenburg, Oct 2024
• M.Sc. Hearing Technology and Audiology, University of Oldenburg, Jan 2020
• B.Eng. Media Technology, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf, Jan 2015

Publications

• Hake, R., Bürgel, M., Lesimple, C., Vormann, M., Wagener, K. C., Kuehnel, V., and Siedenburg, K. (2025). Perception of recorded music with hearing aids: Compression differentially affects musical scene analysis and musical sound quality. Trends in Hearing, 29:23312165251368669.
• Bürgel, M. and Siedenburg, K. (2024). Impact of interference on vocal and instrument recognition. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 156(2):922–938.
• Siedenburg, K., Bürgel, M.,Ozgür, E., Scheicht, C., and Töpken, S. (2024). Vibrotactile enhancement of musical engagement. Scientific Reports, 14(7764):1–9.
• Bürgel, M., Mares, D., and Siedenburg, K. (2024). Enhanced salience of edge frequencies in auditory pattern recognition. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, published online, October 26, 2024(86):2811–2820.
• Bürgel, M., Mencke, I., Benjamin, A., Dechert, M., Derks, D., Gerdes, K., Hake, R., Jacobsen, S., and Siedenburg, K. (2023). Unifying concert research and science outreach. Musicae Scientiae, 28(1):187–191
• Bürgel, M. and Siedenburg, K. (2023). Salience of frequency micro-modulations in popular music. Music Perception, 41(1):1–14.
• Hake, R., Bürgel, M., Nguyen, N. K., Greasley, A., Müllensiefen, D., and Siedenburg, K. (2023). Development of an adaptive test of musical scene analysis abilities for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Behavior Research Methods, 5456–5481:5456–5481
• Bürgel, M., Picinali, L., and Siedenburg, K. (2021). Listening in the mix: Lead vocals robustly attract auditory attention in popular music. Frontiers in Psychology, pages 6117, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.769663.