Cognitive hearing aids? Insights and possibilities

The working memory plays an important role in successfully overcoming adverse listening conditions andshould consequently be considered when designing and testing hearing aids. A number of studies have established therelationship between hearing in noise and working memory involvement, but with the Sentence-final Word Identificationand Recall (SWIRL) test, it is possible to show that working memory is also involved in listening under favorableconditions and that noise reduction has a positive influence in situation with very little noise. Although the capacity of theworking memory is a finite individual size, its involvement can differ with fatigue and other factors and individualizationof hearing aids should take this into account to obtain the best performance. A way of individually adapting hearing aidsis based on changes in the electrical activity of the brain (EEG). Here we present the possibilities that arise from usingEEG and show that ear-mounted electrodes is able to record useful EEG that can be explored for individualization ofhearing aids. Such an adaptation could be done based on changes in the electrical activity of the brain (EEG). Here wepresent the possibilities that arise from using EEG and show that ear-mounted electrodes is able to record useful EEG thatcan be explored for individualization of hearing aids