Scene hearing aids

The natural environment challenges the brain to prioritize the processing of salient stimuli. The barn owl, a sound localization specialist, exhibits a circuit called the midbrain stimulus selection network, dedicated to representing locations of the most salient stimulus in circumstances of concurrent stimuli. Previous competition studies using unimodal (visual) and bimodal (visual and auditory) stimuli have shown that relative strength is encoded in spike response rates. However, open questions remain concerning auditory-auditory competition on coding...

Auditory perception can be significantly disrupted by noise. To discriminate sounds from noise, auditory scene analysis (ASA) extracts the functionally relevant sounds from acoustic input. The zebra finch communicates in noisy environments. Neurons in their secondary auditory pallial cortex (caudomedial nidopallium; NCM) can encode song from background chorus, or scenes, and this capacity may aid behavioral ASA. Furthermore, song processing is modulated by the rapid synthesis of neuroestrogens when hearing conspecific song...

Dynamic range compression is a crucial component in hearing aids, aiming to restore audibility for hearing-impaired listeners. However, determining suitable compression parameters, such as the time constants for the level estimation stage, remains a topic of debate, as the perceptual benefit of different parameter configurations varies depending on the acoustic conditions. In this study, a data-driven distance metric based on physical metrics was developed to evaluate and compare the performance of various compression systems...

Introduction  Older individuals often report that they find it difficulty in enjoying watching television since they find it hard to follow the rapid intensity variations, and voice changes from scene to scene. Objective  The present study investigated the effect of coupling the hearing aid with the television via Bluetooth on audiovisual speech recognition and quality rating of compressed speech in older individuals with hearing loss. Method  Twenty participants in the age range of 60 to 75 years who had moderate to moderately severe sloping sensorineural hearing loss were bilaterally fitted with digital receiver in the canal hearing aids...

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the adjustment behaviour of hearing aid (HA) users participating in a semi-supervised self-adjustment fine-tuning procedure for HAs. The aim was to link behaviour with the reproducibility and duration of the adjustments. DESIGN: Participants used a two-dimensional user interface to identify their HA gain preferences while listening to realistic sound scenes presented in a laboratory environment. The interface allowed participants to adjust amplitude (vertical axis) and spectral slope (horizontal axis) simultaneously...

Listeners use the spatial location or change in spatial location of coherent acoustic cues to aid in auditory object formation. From stimulus-evoked onset responses in normal-hearing listeners using electroencephalography (EEG), we have previously shown measurable tuning to stimuli changing location in quiet, revealing a potential window into the cortical representations of auditory scene analysis. These earlier studies used non-fluctuating, spectrally narrow stimuli, so it was still unknown whether previous observations would translate to speech stimuli, and whether responses would be preserved for stimuli in the presence of background maskers...

Speech with high sound quality and little noise is central to many of our communication tools, including calls, video conferencing and hearing aids. While human ratings provide the best measure of sound quality, they are costly and time-intensive to gather, thus computational metrics are typically used instead. Here we present a non-intrusive, deep learning-based metric that takes only a sound sample as an input and returns ratings in three categories: overall quality, noise, and sound quality. This metric is available via a web API and is composed of a deep neural network ensemble with 5 networks that use either ResNet-26 architectures with STFT inputs or fully-connected networks with wav2vec features as inputs...

Noisy environments, changes and variations in the volume of speech, and non-face-to-face conversations impair the user experience with hearing aids. Generally, a hearing aid amplifies sounds so that a hearing-impaired person can listen, converse, and actively engage in daily activities. Presently, there are some sophisticated hearing aid algorithms available that operate on numerous frequency bands to not only amplify but also provide tuning and noise filtering to minimize background distractions. One of those is the BioAid assistive hearing system, which is an open-source, freely available downloadable app with twenty-four tuning settings...

Current hearing aids are limited with respect to speech-specific optimization for spatial sound sources to perform speech enhancement. In this study, we therefore propose an approach for spatial detection of speech based on sound source localization and blind optimization of speech enhancement for binaural hearing aids. We have combined an estimator for the direction of arrival (DOA), featuring high spatial resolution but no specialization to speech, with a measure of speech quality with low spatial resolution obtained after directional filtering...

In naturalistic auditory scenes, relevant information is rarely concentrated at a single location, but rather unpredictably scattered in- and out-field-of-view (in-/out-FOV). Although the parsing of a complex auditory scene is a fairly simple job for a healthy human auditory system, the uncertainty represents a major issue in the development of effective hearing aid (HA) processing strategies. Whereas traditional omnidirectional microphones (OM) amplify the complete auditory scene without enhancing signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) between in- and out-FOV streams, directional microphones (DM) may greatly increase SNR at the cost of preventing HA users to perceive out-FOV information...

Hearing in noise is a core problem in audition, and a challenge for hearing-impaired listeners, yet the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We explored whether harmonic frequency relations, a signature property of many communication sounds, aid hearing in noise for normal hearing listeners. We measured detection thresholds in noise for tones and speech synthesized to have harmonic or inharmonic spectra. Harmonic signals were consistently easier to detect than otherwise identical inharmonic signals...

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the effects of different adjustment criteria and sound scenes on self-adjusted hearing-aid gain settings. Self-adjusted settings were evaluated for speech recognition in noise, perceived listening effort, and preference. DESIGN: This study evaluated a semi-supervised self-adjustment fine-tuning procedure that presents realistic everyday sound scenes in a laboratory environment, using a two-dimensional user interface, and enabling simultaneous changes in amplitude and spectral slope...

OBJECTIVE: Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in spatial scenarios were measured in simulated cochlear implant (CI) listeners with either contralateral normal hearing, or aided hearing impairment (bimodal), and compared to SRTs of real patients, who were measured using the exact same paradigm, to assess goodness of simulation. DESIGN: CI listening was simulated using a vocoder incorporating actual CI signal processing and physiologic details of electric stimulation on one side...

Objective. Neuro-steered assistive technologies have been suggested to offer a major advancement in future devices like neuro-steered hearing aids. Auditory attention decoding (AAD) methods would in that case allow for identification of an attended speaker within complex auditory environments, exclusively from neural data. Decoding the attended speaker using neural information has so far only been done in controlled laboratory settings. Yet, it is known that ever-present factors like distraction and movement are reflected in the neural signal parameters related to attention...

Computer audition (i.e., intelligent audio) has made great strides in recent years; however, it is still far from achieving holistic hearing abilities, which more appropriately mimic human-like understanding. Within an audio scene, a human listener is quickly able to interpret layers of sound at a single time-point, with each layer varying in characteristics such as location, state, and trait. Currently, integrated machine listening approaches, on the other hand, will mainly recognise only single events. In this context, this contribution aims to provide key insights and approaches, which can be applied in computer audition to achieve the goal of a more holistic intelligent understanding system, as well as identifying challenges in reaching this goal...

This paper reviews the hypothesis of harmonic cancellation according to which an interfering sound is suppressed or canceled on the basis of its harmonicity (or periodicity in the time domain) for the purpose of Auditory Scene Analysis. It defines the concept, discusses theoretical arguments in its favor, and reviews experimental results that support it, or not. If correct, the hypothesis may draw on time-domain processing of temporally accurate neural representations within the brainstem, as required also by the classic equalization-cancellation model of binaural unmasking...

Since emotion recognition involves integration of the visual and auditory signals, it is likely that sensory impairments worsen emotion recognition. In emotion recognition, young adults can compensate for unimodal sensory degradations if the other modality is intact. However, most sensory impairments occur in the elderly population and it is unknown whether older adults are similarly capable of compensating for signal degradations. As a step towards studying potential effects of real sensory impairments, this study examined how degraded signals affect emotion recognition in older adults with normal hearing and vision...

There are two parts to this article. The first is a general overview of how hearing aid classification works, including a comparison study of normal-hearing listeners and multiple manufacturers' hearing aids while listening to a sound parkour composed of a multitude of acoustic scenes. Most hearing aids applied nearly identical classification for simple listening environments. But differences began to appear across manufacturers' products when the listening environments became more complex. The second section reviews the results of a study of the acoustic ecology (listening environments) experienced by several cohorts of hearing aid users over a 4-month period...

Understanding speech in noise is difficult for individuals with normal hearing and is even more so for individuals with hearing loss. Difficulty understanding speech in noise is one of the primary reasons people seek hearing assistance. Despite amplification, many hearing aid users still struggle to understand speech in noise. In response to this persistent problem, hearing aid manufacturers have invested significantly in developing new solutions. Any solution is not without its tradeoffs, and decisions must be made when optimizing and implementing them...

Cochlear implants (CIs) have been remarkably successful at restoring hearing in severely-to-profoundly hearing-impaired individuals. However, users often struggle to deconstruct complex auditory scenes with multiple simultaneous sounds, which can result in reduced music enjoyment and impaired speech understanding in background noise. Hearing aid users often have similar issues, though these are typically less acute. Several recent studies have shown that haptic stimulation can enhance CI listening by giving access to sound features that are poorly transmitted through the electrical CI signal...