Top-Down Control of Selective Amplification

人类听众依赖听觉在日常社交场合中进行有效的交流。 尽管我们在很大程度上依赖于我们的能力，在嘈杂的背景中选择性地注意到一个声音， 在谈话过程中说话者的过渡，这项任务是相当复杂的，成功地完成它取决于 在听觉外围到大脑的许多生理部位上处理的完整性。它 众所周知，听力损失可能不利地影响收听者在感知上将一个讲话者隔离的能力。 在其他说话者中间并且理解该说话者的口头消息（即，“鸡尾酒会问题”;见 Middlebrooks等人，2017年，最近的一系列评论）。感觉神经性听力最常见的治疗方法 听力损失（SNHL）是一种助听器，或一对助听器，可以将声音提高到可听水平，同时保留 舒适的响度，并且可以通过“降噪”改善某些类别声音的信噪比。 然而，即使患有SNHL的听众佩戴助听器，他们仍然经常遇到极端困难。 感知导航“听觉场景”，严重限制了他们有效沟通的能力。一个原因 从声学的角度来看，将特定声源指定为"目标"与"掩蔽物"， 任意的，因为它取决于当前和可变的内部状态的观察者。因此， 在要被关注的目标讲话者和要被忽略的掩蔽讲话者之间的选择只能由收听者进行， 可能会随时改变。虽然助听器对声音的放大提供了最好的 作为改善SNHL听众沟通的唯一选择，目前的助听器固有地失败了 解决声源选择问题，因为它们不加区别地放大目标和掩蔽声音， 区分收听者选择哪个源作为目标的能力。因此，挑战在于设计一个 助听器只专注于听者选择听的那些声音并抑制竞争声音， 立即、准确、有效地响应听众的意愿。在过去的颁奖期间， 我们的工作已经证明，由头戴式麦克风阵列实现的声学波束形成可以 在解决鸡尾酒会问题时，为SNHL听众提供了显著的优势。而且我们 已经发现，通过感测眼睛，可以快速有效地实现对放大光束的操纵 用眼睛跟踪器注视并相应地引导波束的声学注视方向（ALD）。本 应用程序请求支持继续研究这种视觉引导助听器（VGHA），并进一步研究 它所基于的科学前提。总体目标是更好地理解自上而下的控制 选择性放大在典型的社交情境中为SNHL听众提供帮助，以提高我们的听力。 理解听觉和视觉选择性注意，并扩大潜在的好处， VGHA适用于新听众人群-双侧人工耳蜗植入者和失语症患者， 在复杂的多说话者通信情况下理解语音通常经历很大的困难。

Human listeners depend on the sense of hearing to communicate effectively in everyday social situations. Although we rely heavily on our ability to selectively attend to a single voice in a noisy background, and to follow transitions in talkers during conversation, this task is quite complex and accomplishing it successfully depends on the integrity of processing at a number of physiological sites spanning the auditory periphery to the brain. It is well known that hearing loss may adversely affect a listener's ability to perceptually segregate one talker in the midst of other talkers and to understand that talker's spoken message (i.e., the "cocktail party problem"; see Middlebrooks et al., 2017, for a series of recent reviews). The most common remedy for sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) is a hearing aid, or a pair of aids, that can boost sounds to audible levels while preserving comfortable loudness and may improve signal-to-noise ratio for certain classes of sounds via "noise reduction". However, even when listeners with SNHL wear hearing aids they often still experience extreme difficulty perceptually navigating the "auditory scene", severely limiting their ability to communicate effectively. One reason is that, from an acoustic perspective, the designation of a particular sound source as "target" versus "masker" is arbitrary because it depends on the current - and changeable - internal state of the observer. Thus, the distinction between a target talker to be attended and a masker talker to be ignored can only be made by the listener and may change from moment to moment. Although the amplification of sounds by hearing aids provides the best (often the only) option for improving communication for listeners with SNHL, current hearing aids inherently fail to solve the source selection problem because they amplify target and masker sounds indiscriminately without the ability to distinguish which source the listener has chosen as the target. Thus the challenge is to devise a hearing aid that focuses only on those sounds the listener chooses to attend and suppresses competing sounds, responding to the wishes of the listener immediately, accurately, and effectively. During the past award period, our work has demonstrated that acoustic beamforming implemented by a head worn microphone array can provide a significant advantage for listeners with SNHL in solving the cocktail party problem. Furthermore, we have found that steering the beam of amplification can be accomplished quickly and effectively by sensing eye gaze with an eye tracker and directing the acoustic look direction (ALD) of the beam accordingly. The present application requests support to continue work on this visually guided hearing aid (VGHA) and to further examine the scientific premise upon which it is based. The overall goals are to better understand how top-down control of selective amplification provides assistance to listeners with SNHL in typical social situations, to advance our understanding of auditory and auditory-visual selective attention, and to extend the potential benefits of the VGHA to new populations of listeners - users of bilateral cochlear implants and persons with aphasia - who typically experience great difficulty understanding speech in complex, multiple-talker communication situations.