Trends in Hearing最新文献

Voice cloning is used to generate synthetic speech that mimics vocal characteristics of human talkers. This experiment used voice cloning to compare human and synthetic speech for intelligibility, human-likeness, and perceptual similarity, all tested in young adults with normal hearing. Masked-sentence recognition was evaluated using speech produced by five human talkers and their synthetically generated voice clones presented in speech-shaped noise at -6 dB signal-to-noise ratio. There were two types of sentences: semantically meaningful and nonsense. Human and automatic speech recognition scoring was used to evaluate performance. Participants were asked to rate human-likeness and determine whether pairs of sentences were produced by the same versus different people. As expected, sentence-recognition scores were worse for nonsense sentences compared to meaningful sentences, but they were similar for speech produced by human talkers and voice clones. Human-likeness scores were also similar for speech produced by human talkers and their voice clones. Participants were very good at identifying differences between voices but were less accurate at distinguishing between human/clone pairs, often leaning towards thinking they were produced by the same person. Reliability scoring by automatic speech recognition agreed with human reliability scoring for 98% of keywords and was minimally dependent on the context of the target sentences. Results provide preliminary support for the use of voice clones when evaluating the recognition of human and synthetic speech. More generally, voice synthesis and automatic speech recognition are promising tools for evaluating speech recognition in human listeners.

The objective of this project was to establish cutoff scores on the tinnitus subscale of the Tinnitus and Hearing Survey (THS) using a large sample of United States service members (SM) with the end goal of guiding clinical referrals for tinnitus evaluation. A total of 4,589 SM undergoing annual audiometric surveillance were prospectively recruited to complete the THS tinnitus subscale (THS-T). A subset of 1,304 participants also completed the Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI). The original 5-point response scale of the THS (THS-T₁₆) was modified to an 11-point scale (THS-T₄₀) for some participants, to align with the response scale of the TFI. Age, sex, hearing loss, and self-reported tinnitus bother were also recorded. The THS-T was relatively insensitive to hearing, but self-reported bothersome tinnitus was significantly associated with the THS-T₄₀ score. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to determine cutoff scores on the THS-T that aligned with recommended cutoff values for clinical intervention on the TFI. A cutoff of 9 on the THS-T₄₀ aligns with a TFI cutoff of 25, indicating a patient may need intervention for tinnitus. A cutoff of 15 aligns with a TFI cutoff of 50, indicating that more aggressive intervention for tinnitus is warranted. The THS-T is a viable tool to identify patients with tinnitus complaints warranting clinical evaluation for use by hearing conservation programs and primary care clinics. The THS-T₄₀ cutoff scores of 9 and 15 provide clinical reference points to guide referrals to audiology.

The extent to which active noise cancelation (ANC), when combined with hearing assistance, can improve speech intelligibility in noise is not well understood. One possible source of benefit is ANC's ability to reduce the sound level of the direct (i.e., vent-transmitted) path. This reduction lowers the "floor" imposed by the direct path, thereby allowing any increases to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) created in the amplified path to be "realized" at the eardrum. Here we used a modeling approach to estimate this benefit. We compared pairs of simulated hearing aids that differ only in terms of their ability to provide ANC and computed intelligibility metrics on their outputs. The difference in metric scores between simulated devices is termed the "ANC Benefit." These simulations show that ANC Benefit increases as (1) the environmental sound level increases, (2) the ability of the hearing aid to improve SNR increases, (3) the strength of the ANC increases, and (4) the hearing loss severity decreases. The predicted size of the ANC Benefit can be substantial. For a moderate hearing loss, the model predicts improvement in intelligibility metrics of >30% when environments are moderately loud (>70 dB SPL) and devices are moderately capable of increasing SNR (by >4 dB). It appears that ANC can be a critical ingredient in hearing devices that attempt to improve SNR in loud environments. ANC will become more and more important as advanced SNR-improving algorithms (e.g., artificial intelligence speech enhancement) are included in hearing devices.

During continuous speech perception, endogenous neural activity becomes time-locked to acoustic stimulus features, such as the speech amplitude envelope. This speech-brain coupling can be decoded using non-invasive brain imaging techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG). Neural decoding may provide clinical use as an objective measure of stimulus encoding by the brain-for example during cochlear implant listening, wherein the speech signal is severely spectrally degraded. Yet, interplay between acoustic and linguistic factors may lead to top-down modulation of perception, thereby complicating audiological applications. To address this ambiguity, we assess neural decoding of the speech envelope under spectral degradation with EEG in acoustically hearing listeners (n = 38; 18-35 years old) using vocoded speech. We dissociate sensory encoding from higher-order processing by employing intelligible (English) and non-intelligible (Dutch) stimuli, with auditory attention sustained using a repeated-phrase detection task. Subject-specific and group decoders were trained to reconstruct the speech envelope from held-out EEG data, with decoder significance determined via random permutation testing. Whereas speech envelope reconstruction did not vary by spectral resolution, intelligible speech was associated with better decoding accuracy in general. Results were similar across subject-specific and group analyses, with less consistent effects of spectral degradation in group decoding. Permutation tests revealed possible differences in decoder statistical significance by experimental condition. In general, while robust neural decoding was observed at the individual and group level, variability within participants would most likely prevent the clinical use of such a measure to differentiate levels of spectral degradation and intelligibility on an individual basis.