EEG based hearing perception level estimation for normal hearing persons

Abstract

Auditory evoked potential (AEP) is a type of EEG signal emanated from the scalp of the brain by an acoustical stimulus. AEP response reflects the auditory ability level of an individual. In this paper, AEP signals were recorded by stimulating repetive click-sound of 1000 Hz at different stimulus intensity levels of 25 dB, 40 dB, 50 dB and 70 dB. Spectral entropy features of four distinct bands were extracted from the recorded AEP signal. The extracted features were associated to the hearing perception level of an individual and a neural network models was developed. The maximum classification accuracy of the developed neural network model was observed as 91.4 per cent in discriminating the specified stimulus intensity levels. From the result, it is clear that a different auditory stimuli level reflects corresponding hearing perception level of a person. This study might lead to a real-time practical system for non-invasively estimating the hearing perceptional level of a person.