{"id":162368,"date":"2025-04-30T17:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T21:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=162368"},"modified":"2025-04-30T17:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T21:03:40","slug":"new-algorithm-for-hearing-aids-might-solve-cocktail-party-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/04\/30\/new-algorithm-for-hearing-aids-might-solve-cocktail-party-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"New Algorithm for Hearing Aids Might Solve “Cocktail Party Problem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

BU-developed, brain-inspired algorithm could improve word recognition accuracy in noisy situations<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Andrew Thurston<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

When a group of friends gets together at a bar or gathers for an intimate dinner, conversations can quickly multiply and mix, with different groups and pairings chatting over and across one another. Navigating this lively jumble of words\u2014and focusing on the ones that matter\u2014is particularly difficult for people with some form of hearing loss. Bustling conversations can become a fused mess of chatter, even if someone has hearing aids, which often struggle filtering out background noise. It\u2019s known as the \u201ccocktail party problem\u201d\u2014and Boston University researchers believe they might have a solution.<\/p>\n

\"\"
In a BU lab, researchers (from left) Kamal Sen, Alexander D. Boyd (ENG\u201923,\u201926), and Virginia Best tested a brain-inspired algorithm\u2019s ability to help hearing aid users separate sounds in noisy places. <\/em>Photo by Jackie Ricciardi for Boston University<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new brain-inspired algorithm developed at BU could help hearing aids tune out interference and isolate single talkers in a crowd of voices. In testing, researchers found it could improve word recognition accuracy by 40 percentage points relative to current hearing aid algorithms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were extremely surprised and excited by the magnitude of the improvement in performance\u2014it\u2019s pretty rare to find such big improvements,\u201d says Associate Professor Kamal Sen<\/a> (BME<\/a>), the algorithm\u2019s developer. The findings were published in Communications Engineering<\/a><\/em>, a Nature Portfolio journal.<\/p>\n

Some estimates put the number of Americans with hearing loss at close to 50 million<\/a>; by 2050, around 2.5 billion people globally are expected to have some form of hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary complaint of people with hearing loss is that they have trouble communicating in noisy environments,\u201d says Virginia Best<\/a>, a Sargent College professor who collaborated with Sen on the study. \u201cThese environments are very common in daily life and they tend to be really important to people\u2014think about dinner table conversations, social gatherings, workplace meetings. So, solutions that can enhance communication in noisy places have the potential for a huge impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the full story at the Brink<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen’s biologically oriented sound segregation algorithm (BOSSA) could help the hearing-impaired better follow conversations in crowded, noisy settings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":112237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,899,1335],"tags":[847],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162368"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162389,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162368\/revisions\/162389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}