Top-Down Control of Selective Amplification

人类听者依靠听觉在日常社交场合进行有效的交流。 尽管我们在很大程度上依赖于在嘈杂的背景中选择性地注意到一个单一的声音并跟随的能力 谈话者在交谈中的转换，这项任务相当复杂，能否成功完成取决于 在跨越听觉外周到大脑的多个生理位置上的处理的完整性。它 众所周知，听力损失可能会不利地影响收听者在感知上将一个说话者隔开的能力. 在其他谈话者中间，并理解该谈话者的口头信息(即“鸡尾酒会问题”；请参见 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 Lost(SNHL)是一种助听器或一对助听器，可以将声音提高到可听的水平，同时保留 舒适的响度，并可通过“降噪”提高某些类别声音的信噪比。 然而，即使SNHL的听众佩戴助听器，他们仍然经常遇到极大的困难 感知导航的“听觉场景”，严重限制了他们有效沟通的能力。其中一个原因 从声学的角度来看，将特定声源指定为“目标”而不是“掩蔽者”是 任意性，因为它取决于观察者当前且可变的内部状态。因此，区别在于 在要参加的目标说话者和要忽略的掩蔽者说话者之间，只能由听话者和 可能随着时间的推移而改变。虽然助听器放大声音提供了最好的 (通常是)改善SNHL听众沟通的唯一选择，目前的助听器固有地失效 要解决源选择问题，因为它们不分青红皂白地放大目标和掩蔽声音 辨别收听者选择的目标来源的能力。因此，挑战是设计一种 助听器只关注听者选择听到的那些声音，并抑制竞争的声音， 及时、准确、有效地回应听者的愿望。在过去的颁奖期间， 我们的工作表明，通过头戴式麦克风阵列实现的声学波束成形可以 为SNHL听众在解决鸡尾酒会问题方面提供显著优势。此外，我们 我发现，通过感知眼睛可以快速有效地完成光束放大的控制 用眼睛跟踪器凝视，并相应地引导波束的声学注视方向(ALD)。现在 应用程序请求支持以继续此视觉引导助听器(VGHA)的工作，并进一步检查 它所依据的科学前提。总体目标是更好地理解自上而下控制 选择性放大为典型社交场合中患有SNHL的听众提供帮助，以推进我们的 理解听觉和听觉-视觉选择性注意，并扩大 VGHA向新的听者群体--双侧人工耳蜗者和失语症患者--世卫组织 在复杂、多人交流的情况下，通常会遇到很大的语音理解困难。

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.