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

Real-time brain-controlled hearing system improves speech perception, with 100% success in tracking attention shifts in neurosurgical patients.

• Why it matters: Many people struggle to understand speech in noisy environments, 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 in patients undergoing neurosurgery, researchers developed a closed-loop system that decodes attention with high fidelity to dynamically amplify the attended speaker across multiple experiments.
• The result: The system enhanced speech intelligibility, reduced listening effort, and was consistently preferred by subjects, demonstrating a validated, real-time brain-controlled solution for personalized assistive hearing.