The Future of Hearing Aid Technology

The Future

of Hearing Aid Technology

Tremendous strides and advancements were made in hearing aid technology in the past decades to improve and optimize hearing. Although listening is an important aspect of conversation which hearing aids address, it is also essential for hearing aid users to engage, participate and socialize in their everyday life. Conversations in group settings or in noisy environments are still challenging for hearing aid wearers. We need to understand the dynamics of these settings specifically the effect of noise, the effect of hearing loss as well as the effect of amplification on communication to optimize and improve it.

AI in Hearing Aids

Other aspects to consider are the individual’s needs, preferences, and intent in a specific situation. Among the many technological advancements is the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in hearing aids. Modern hearing aids offer the wearer the ability to adjust and optimize their listening experience in a given environment in real-time, to meet their individual preferences, needs, intent and listening goal. This functionality, often available in the form of a smartphone application, provides the user some level of control which contributes to improved satisfaction with the hearing aids. AI allows the hearing aid manufacturer to analyze this extensive informative data gathered from users from around the world to improve future hearing aid technologies and help hearing aid wearers hear better.

Looking to the Future

What does the future hold and what is to come? What if we could determine the hearing aid wearer’s intent without asking or having to resort to the AI data? Unlike other mammals, humans are not able to improve the ratio of the signal over noise, by effectively turning their ears towards an attended sound. Instead, we can choose to turn our entire head. However, in a dynamic sound scene, such as participating in a group conversation where you are switching from one attended speaker to the next, also needing to improve the ratio of the signal over the ambient noise by turning your head in the desired direction is very difficult and tiresome. If a hearing aid is to help in this situation, it would need to know the direction of the sound you are interested in.

An assessment by an audioprosthetist is required to determine which hearing aid suits the patient’s needs.

A recent study from Strauss and his colleagues on the activity of the muscles around the ear has shown that the pinna does in fact move subtly and that such movements are specific to sound direction. That is, the movement of the ear muscles were more significant on the side the subjects were paying attention to. Although we have evolved as a species and lost our ear mobility, the human brain appears to have preserved the ability to direct the pinna towards sound sources of interest.

This finding is promising for future hearing aid technology and application. It could be used to design hearing aid technology able to control the directionality of the microphones according to the individual ear muscle activity, to amplify sounds the hearing aid wearer wants to hear, while minimizing other sounds, improving conversation in challenging environments and allowing the user to truly immerse themselves and enjoy every moment of their life.

Talk to your audioprosthetist to learn more about hearing aid technology.

Janic Lauriault

Audiologist

References: - Balling, L.W.; Mølgaard, L.L.; Townend, O.; and Nielsen, J.B.B., “The Collaboration between Hearing Aid Users and Artificial Intelligence to Optimize Sound”, https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1735135 - Smeds, K.; Dahlquist, M.; Larsson, J.; Herrlin, P.; and Wolters, F., “LEAP, a new laboratory test for evaluating auditory preference”, http://pub.dega-akustik.de/ICA2019/data/ articles/000162.pdf - Strauss, D.J.; Corona-Strauss, F.I.; Schroeer, A.; Flotho, P.; Hannemann, R.; and Hackley, S.A.,

“Vestigial auriculomotor activity indicates the direction of auditory attention in humans”, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54536