Brain Scans Could Identify What You're Actually Listening To
Researchers have developed an EEG-based system that detects which sound source a person is focusing on in noisy environments—a breakthrough for the "cocktail party problem." The technique could improve hearing aids, call center quality control, and brain-computer interfaces by automating attention detection.
Originaltitel: A System Identification Approach to Determining Listening Attention from EEG Signals
<p>We still have very little knowledge about how ourbrains decouple different sound sources, which is known assolving the cocktail party problem. Several approaches; includingERP, time-frequency analysis and, more recently, regression andstimulus reconstruction approaches; have been suggested forsolving this problem. In this work, we study the problem ofcorrelating of EEG signals to different sets of sound sources withthe goal of identifying the single source to which the listener isattending. Here, we propose a method for finding the number ofparameters needed in a regression model to avoid overlearning,which is necessary for determining the attended sound sourcewith high confidence in order to solve the cocktail party problem.</p>