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Top-Down Control of Selective Amplification

Award Number: R01DC013286
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/01/2014
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2025

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View Award Description

Top-Down Control of Selective Amplification - 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.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2024	2023	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	10	5/31/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $647,305 )
2023	2023	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	10	7/1/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$647,305
														Subtotal = $647,305

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $654,317 )
2022	2022	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	9	6/13/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$654,317
														Subtotal = $654,317

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $654,317 )
2021	2021	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	8	6/24/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$654,317
														Subtotal = $654,317

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $654,317 )
2020	2020	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	002	7	6/22/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$654,317
2020	2019	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	6	2/3/2020	COMPETING CONTINUATION	$284,659
2020	2018	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	5	2/3/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	-$284,659
														Subtotal = $654,317

Issue Date FY: 2019 ( Subtotal = $683,069 )
2019	2019	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	6	7/19/2019	COMPETING CONTINUATION	$683,069
2019	2018	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	5	7/17/2019	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $683,069

Issue Date FY: 2018 ( Subtotal = $541,979 )
2018	2018	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	5	4/3/2018	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$54,196
2018	2018	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	5	3/28/2018	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$487,783
														Subtotal = $541,979

Issue Date FY: 2017 ( Subtotal = $541,283 )
2017	2017	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	4	5/24/2017	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$54,126
2017	2017	TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY	1 SILBER WAY	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	4	3/16/2017	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$487,157
														Subtotal = $541,283

Issue Date FY: 2016 ( Subtotal = $541,979 )
2016	2016	BOSTON UNIVERSITY	25 BUICK ST	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	3	3/23/2016	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$541,979
														Subtotal = $541,979

Issue Date FY: 2015 ( Subtotal = $535,871 )
2015	2015	BOSTON UNIVERSITY	25 BUICK ST	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	2	2/26/2015	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$535,871
														Subtotal = $535,871

Issue Date FY: 2014 ( Subtotal = $589,661 )
2014	2014	BOSTON UNIVERSITY	25 BUICK ST	BOSTON	MA	02215	SUFFOLK	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	1	2/25/2014	NEW	$589,661
														Subtotal = $589,661

Grand Total All Awards = $6,044,098

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Top-Down Control of Selective Amplification

Award Number: R01DC013286

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 04/01/2014

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2025

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