Imagine you’re at a bustling dinner party filled with laughter, music, and clinking silverware. You’re trying to follow a conversation across the table, but every word feels like it’s wrapped in noise. For most people, these types of party scenarios, where it’s difficult to filter out extraneous sounds and focus on a single source, are an occasional annoyance. For millions with hearing loss, they’re a daily challenge—and not just in busy settings.
Today’s hearing aids aren’t great at determining which sounds to amplify and which to ignore, and this often leaves users overwhelmed and fatigued. Even the routine act of conversing with a loved one during a car ride can be mentally draining, simply because the hum of the engine and road noises are magnified to create loud and constant background static that blurs speech.
In recent years, modern hearing aids have made impressive strides. They can, for example, use a technology called adaptive beamforming to focus their microphones in the direction of a talker. Noise-reduction settings also help decrease background cacophony, and some devices even use machine-learning-based analysis, trained on uploaded data, to detect certain environments—for example a car or a party—and deploy custom settings.
That’s why I was initially surprised to find out that today’s state-of-the-art hearing aids aren’t good enough. “It’s like my ears work but my brain is tired,” I remember one elderly man complaining, frustrated with the inadequacy of his cutting-edge noise-suppression hearing aids. At the time, I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas, surveying individuals with hearing loss. The man’s insight led me to a realization: Mental strain is an unaddressed frontier of hearing technology.
But what if hearing aids were more than just amplifiers? What if they were listeners too? I envision a new generation of intelligent hearing aids that not only boost sound but also read the wearer’s brain waves and other key physiological markers, enabling them to react accordingly to improve hearing and counter fatigue.
Until last spring, when I took time off to care for my child, I was a senior audio research scientist at Harman International, in Los Angeles. My work combined cognitive neuroscience, auditory prosthetics, and the processing of biosignals, which are measurable physiological cues that reflect our mental and physical state. I’m passionate about developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and adaptive signal-processing systems that make life easier for people with hearing loss. And I’m not alone. A number of researchers and companies are working to create smart hearing aids, and it’s likely they’ll come on the market within a decade.
Two technologies in particular are poised to revolutionize hearing aids, offering personalized, fatigue-free listening experiences: electroencephalography (EEG), which tracks brain activity, and pupillometry, which uses eye measurements to gauge cognitive effort. These approaches might even be used to improve consumer audio devices, transforming the way we listen everywhere.
Aging Populations in a Noisy World
More than 430 million people suffer from disabling hearing loss worldwide, including 34 million children, according to the World Health Organization. And the problem will likely get worse due to rising life expectancies and the fact that the world itself seems to be getting louder. By 2050, an estimated 2.5 billion people will suffer some degree of hearing loss and 700 million will require intervention. On top of that, as many as 1.4 billion of today’s young people—nearly half of those aged 12 to 34—could be at risk of permanent hearing loss from listening to audio devices too loud and for too long.
... continue reading