Real-time brain-controlled selective hearing enhances speech perception in multi-talker environments.

Real-time brain-controlled hearing system improves speech understanding and reduces effort, achieving high decoding fidelity in multi-talker environments.

• Why it matters: Many individuals struggle to understand speech amid noise, and current hearing aids often amplify all sounds rather than focusing on the talker of interest, limiting their effectiveness.
• What they did: Using high-resolution intracranial electroencephalography, researchers developed a closed-loop system that dynamically decodes attention shifts and amplifies the attended speaker in real time across multiple experiments.
• The result: The system enhanced speech intelligibility, lowered listening effort, and was preferred by subjects, demonstrating a practical, personalized solution that advances auditory brain-computer interfaces.