AI improves speech understanding of hearing aid users

Tim Fischer, Postdoctoral Researcher, Hearing Research Laboratory, ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, University of Bern. ARTORG Center - In noisy environments it is difficult for hearing aid users or people with a hearing implant to understand their conversational partner because current audio processors still have difficulty focusing precisely enough on specific sound sources. In a feasibility study, researchers from the Hearing Research Laboratory at the University of Bern and the Inselspital are now suggesting that artificial intelligence could solve this problem. Hearing aids or hearing implants are currently not very good at selectively filtering specific speech from many sound sources for the wearer - a natural ability of our brain that works for normal-hearing people - which is known in professional circles as the "cocktail party effect". Accordingly, it is difficult for people with hearing aids to follow a conversation in a noisy environment. Researchers at the Hearing Research Laboratory of the ARTORG Center, University of Bern, and Inselspital have now devised an unusual approach to improve hearing aids in this respect: virtual auxiliary microphones whose signals are calculated by artificial intelligence. Like an invisible microphone on the forehead.