scholarly journals An fMRI Study to Investigate Auditory Attention: A Model of the Cocktail Party Phenomenon

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiharu NAKAI ◽  
Chikako KATO ◽  
Kayako MATSUO
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Fmri Study

The Combination of Neural Tracking and Alpha Power Lateralization for Auditory Attention Detection

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Szymon Drgas ◽  
Magdalena Blaszak ◽  
Anna Przekoracka-Krawczyk
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Combined Method ◽  
Acoustic Source ◽  
Accurate Identification ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Similar Accuracy

Purpose The acoustic source that is attended to by the listener in a mixture can be identified with a certain accuracy on the basis of their neural response recorded during listening, and various phenomena may be used to detect attention. For example, neural tracking (NT) and alpha power lateralization (APL) may be utilized in order to obtain information concerning attention. However, these methods of auditory attention detection (AAD) are typically tested in different experimental setups, which makes it impossible to compare their accuracy. The aim of this study is to compare the accuracy of AAD based on NT, APL, and their combination for a dichotic natural speech listening task. Method Thirteen adult listeners were presented with dichotic speech stimuli and instructed to attend to one of them. Electroencephalogram of the subjects was continuously recorded during the experiment using a set of 32 active electrodes. The accuracy of AAD was evaluated for trial lengths of 50, 25, and 12.5 s. AAD was tested for various parameters of NT- and APL-based modules. Results The obtained results suggest that NT of natural running speech provides similar accuracy to APL. The statistically significant improvement of the accuracy of AAD using a combined method has been observed not only for the longest duration of test samples (50 s, p = .005) but also for shorter ones (25 s, p = .011). Conclusions It seems that the combination of standard NT and APL significantly increases the effectiveness of accurate identification of the traced signal perceived by a listener under dichotic conditions. It has been demonstrated that, under certain conditions, the combination of NT and APL may provide a benefit for AAD in cocktail party scenarios.

scholarly journals Selective auditory attention detection using dynamic learning systems: The study of RNN and reinforcement learning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masoud Geravanchizadeh ◽  
Hossein Roushan
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Detection System ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Dynamic Learning ◽  
Learning Stage ◽  
Q Learning ◽  
Markov Decision

AbstractThe cocktail party phenomenon describes the ability of the human brain to focus auditory attention on a particular stimulus while ignoring other acoustic events. Selective auditory attention detection (SAAD) is an important issue in the development of brain-computer interface systems and cocktail party processors. This paper proposes a new dynamic attention detection system to process the temporal evolution of the input signal. In the proposed dynamic system, after preprocessing of the input signals, the probabilistic state space of the system is formed. Then, in the learning stage, different dynamic learning methods, including recurrent neural network (RNN) and reinforcement learning (Markov decision process (MDP) and deep Q-learning) are applied to make the final decision as to the attended speech. Among different dynamic learning approaches, the evaluation results show that the deep Q-learning approach (MDP+RNN) provides the highest classification accuracy (94.2%) with the least detection delay. The proposed SAAD system is advantageous, in the sense that the detection of attention is performed dynamically for the sequential inputs. Also, the system has the potential to be used in scenarios, where the attention of the listener might be switched in time in the presence of various acoustic events.

Common networks for selective auditory attention for sounds and words? An fMRI study with implications for attention rehabilitation

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Sturm ◽  
Ralph Schnitker ◽  
Marion Grande ◽  
Walter Huber ◽  
Klaus Willmes
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Fmri Study

scholarly journals EEG-based auditory attention detection: boundary conditions for background noise and speaker positions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neetha Das ◽  
Alexander Bertrand ◽  
Tom Francart
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Noise Level ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Noise Suppression ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Background Noise Level ◽  
Speaker Separation ◽  
Acoustic Conditions ◽  
Decoding Accuracy

AbstractObjectiveA listener’s neural responses can be decoded to identify the speaker the person is attending to in a cocktail party environment. Such auditory attention detection methods have the potential to provide noise suppression algorithms in hearing devices with information about the listener’s attention. A challenge is the effect of noise and other acoustic conditions that can reduce the attention detection accuracy. Specifically, noise can impact the ability of the person to segregate the sound sources and perform selective attention, as well as the external signal processing necessary to decode the attention effectively. The aim of this work is to systematically analyze the effect of noise level and speaker position on attention decoding accuracy.Approach28 subjects participated in the experiment. Auditory stimuli consisted of stories narrated by different speakers from 2 different locations, along with surrounding multi-talker background babble. EEG signals of the subjects were recorded while they focused on one story and ignored the other. The strength of the babble noise as well as the spatial separation between the two speakers were varied between presentations. Spatio-temporal decoders were trained for each subject, and applied to decode attention of the subjects from every 30s segment of data. Behavioral speech recognition thresholds were obtained for the different speaker separations.Main resultsBoth the background noise level and the angular separation between speakers affected attention decoding accuracy. Remarkably, attention decoding performance was seen to increase with the inclusion of moderate background noise (versus no noise), while across the different noise conditions performance dropped significantly with increasing noise level. We also observed that decoding accuracy improved with increasing speaker separation, exhibiting the advantage of spatial release from masking. Furthermore, the effect of speaker separation on the decoding accuracy became stronger when the background noise level increased. A significant correlation between speech intelligibility and attention decoding accuracy was found across conditions.SignificanceThis work shows how the background noise level and relative positions of competing talkers impact attention decoding accuracy. It indicates in which circumstances a neuro-steered noise suppression system may need to operate, in function of acoustic conditions. It also indicates the boundary conditions for the operation of EEG-based attention detection systems in neuro-steered hearing prostheses.Index TermsAuditory attention detection, EEG processing, neuro-steered auditory prostheses, brain-computer interface, cocktail party, acoustic conditions.The work is funded by KU Leuven Special Research Fund C14/16/057 and OT/14/119, FWO project nrs. 1.5.123.16N and G0A4918N, the ERC (637424) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and a research gift of Starkey Hearing Technologies. The scientific responsibility is assumed by its authors.

scholarly journals The Effects of Audiovisual Inputs on Solving the Cocktail Party Problem in the Human Brain: An fMRI Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 3623-3637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanqing Li ◽  
Fangyi Wang ◽  
Yongbin Chen ◽  
Andrzej Cichocki ◽  
Terrence Sejnowski
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Information ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Cocktail Party Problem ◽  
Audiovisual Stimulus ◽  
Neural Representations ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Brain Pattern ◽  
Audiovisual Stimuli ◽  
Decoding Accuracy ◽  
The Brain

Abstract At cocktail parties, our brains often simultaneously receive visual and auditory information. Although the cocktail party problem has been widely investigated under auditory-only settings, the effects of audiovisual inputs have not. This study explored the effects of audiovisual inputs in a simulated cocktail party. In our fMRI experiment, each congruent audiovisual stimulus was a synthesis of 2 facial movie clips, each of which could be classified into 1 of 2 emotion categories (crying and laughing). Visual-only (faces) and auditory-only stimuli (voices) were created by extracting the visual and auditory contents from the synthesized audiovisual stimuli. Subjects were instructed to selectively attend to 1 of the 2 objects contained in each stimulus and to judge its emotion category in the visual-only, auditory-only, and audiovisual conditions. The neural representations of the emotion features were assessed by calculating decoding accuracy and brain pattern-related reproducibility index based on the fMRI data. We compared the audiovisual condition with the visual-only and auditory-only conditions and found that audiovisual inputs enhanced the neural representations of emotion features of the attended objects instead of the unattended objects. This enhancement might partially explain the benefits of audiovisual inputs for the brain to solve the cocktail party problem.

Divided auditory attention with up to three sound sources: A cocktail party

1994 ◽  
Vol 95 (5) ◽  
pp. 2916-2916 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Yost ◽  
Stanley Sheft ◽  
Raymond (Toby) Dye
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Sound Sources

scholarly journals An fMRI Study of Brain Regions Activated by Auditory Attention

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-154
Author(s):  
Yuta Nakao ◽  
Hideo Onishi ◽  
Yumi Endo ◽  
Osamu Shiromoto ◽  
Hiroyuki Muranaka
Keyword(s):  
Brain Regions ◽  
Auditory Attention ◽  
Fmri Study
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