More than 11% of people in the EU are affected by hearing loss, but only 41% use a hearing aid due to continued problems with speech understanding and fitting the devices. The NeuroSensEar proket aims to improve the acceptance of and provision of hearing aids by significantly increasing their performance and greatly facilitating and automating their adaptation to the patient and different listening situations.
To achieve this, principles of biological information processing are integrated into hearing aid technology and interactive outputs for better listening comprehension are investigated, so that persons with hearing impairment largely regain their ability to perceive hearing.
Goal and implementation
The aim is to significantly improve the acceptance and supply of hearing aids by significantly increasing their performance and greatly facilitating and automating their adaptation to the patient and different hearing situations. This will, in the long run, help to reduce the economic costs and the severe social consequences in terms of sustainable and efficient health care.
As a breakthrough, we aim to solve two main problems of current hearing aids:
1. hearing comprehension in difficult listening situations with many sound sources and low signal-to-noise ratios.
and
2. the lifelong ability to recognize, learn and act in new listening situations and demands, according to a continuous adaptation to the wearer and his/her hearing and the changing life/environment surrounding him/her.
Scientific advisory board
Prof. Dr. Eckehard Schöll (TU Berlin, BCCN, PIK):
Expert for nonlinear dynamics
Prof. Dr. Herbert Jäger (U. Groningen):
Expert in reservoir computing/ML
Dr. Bipin Rajendran (Kings College London):
Expert for spike-based neural networks (for sensor technology)
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Chicca (U. Groningen):
Expert in neuromorphic VLSI electronics
Prof. Dr. Manfred Kössl (Uni Frankfurt):
Expert for signal processing through the cochlea
Prof. Dr. Christian Dobel (Uniklinikum Jena):
ENT physician and expert in auditory perception
The Carl Zeiss Foundation has set itself the goal of creating scope for scientific breakthroughs. As a partner of excellent science, it supports both basic research and application-oriented research and teaching in the STEM disciplines (mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology). Founded in 1889 by the physicist and mathematician Ernst Abbe, the Carl Zeiss Foundation is one of the oldest and largest private science-funding foundations in Germany. It is the sole owner of Carl Zeiss AG and SCHOTT AG. Its projects are financed from the dividend distributions of the two foundation companies.