Researchers at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science have unveiled a new type of hearing aid designed to analyze the wearer’s brain activity in order to identify who the wearer is listening to. This new “cognitive hearing aid” could be a game changer in environments with a lot of background noise or in conversations with multiple speakers.
While hearing aids that are able to suppress background noise already exist, they have no way of determining what the wearer wants to listen to. This new device constantly monitors the brain activity of the wearer and uses the collected data to determine which speaker the wearer is trying to pay attention to.
The device is currently in very early stages of development and will take more time before it is available to customers. The development team is currently working on refining the algorithms that help to determine what the wearer intends to listen to, as well as working on a less intrusive way to collect the neural information, which would measure brain activity directly from the ear.
If you have trouble understanding fast speech, or speech in environments with a lot of background noise, hearing aids may be able to help you. If you’d like to set up an appointment with a hearing health care provider, give us a call at (877) 426-0687.
