Paper Info
Title
Objective neurophysiological assessment for sound quality perception by hearing-impaired listeners.
Abstract
Approximately one third of the world's population over 65 years of age has disabling hearing loss (World Health Organization, 2017). Hearing aids are the primary treatment for permanent hearing loss. Current clinical practice in fitting hearing aids is largely based on audiometric hearing thresholds. This approach to hearing aid fittings presents a conflict between compensation for hearing loss and perceived sound quality: A compromise in fitting may lead to under-compensation for audiometric loss or poor perceived sound quality. Suprathreshold auditory deficits, and associated central physiological deficits, have the potential to interplay dynamically in the process of perceiving sound quality, giving rise to individual judgments according to the acoustic environment and context. Objective neurophysiological measures of the perceived quality of distorted speech by hearing-impaired listeners have the potential to provide a more complete diagnosis of an individual's residual hearing ability. Non-invasive measures of brain activity can record cortical responses to natural speech while system identification analysis methods provide regression mappings between low-frequency cortical activity and representations of the speech envelope that has been distorted by varying relevant signal processing algorithms in hearing aids (e.g. multi-channel dynamic range compression). Such objective measures of distortion in the speech envelope under given signal processing conditions may relate to individual ratings of perceived sound quality obtained during behavioral testing. Objective neurophysiological assessment of sound quality promises to inform personalized assessment and management of hearing loss: Individualizing signal processing parameters will potentially mitigate the inherent conflict between compensation for audiometric loss and perceived sound quality in existing strategies for hearing device fitting.
Year
Venue
Field
2017
Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference
Population,Neurophysiology,Hearing aid,Psychology,Sound quality,Brain activity and meditation,Hearing loss,Audiology,Perception,Dynamic range compression
DocType
ISSN
Citations 
Conference
2309-9402
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rebecca E. Millman1123.61
Michael A. Stone200.34
Chin-Tuan Tan302.37