IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 32

Deep Learning
Reinvents the
Hearing Aid
Finally, wearers can
pick out a voice in
a crowded room
My Mother began to lose her hearing
while I was away at college. I would return home
to share what I'd learned, and she would lean
in to hear. Soon it became difficult for her to
hold a conversation if more than one person
spoke at a time. Now, even with a hearing aid,
she struggles to distinguish the sounds of each
voice. When my family visits for dinner, she still
pleads with us to speak in turn.
My mother's hardship reflects a classic problem for hearing aid manufacturers. The human
auditory system can naturally pick out a voice
in a crowded room, but creating a hearing aid

that mimics that ability has stumped signal
processing specialists, artificial intelligence
experts, and audiologists for decades. British
cognitive scientist Colin Cherry first dubbed this
the "cocktail party problem" in 1953.
More than six decades later, less than 25 percent of people who need a hearing aid actually
use one. The greatest frustration among potential users is that a hearing aid cannot distinguish
between, for example, a voice and the sound of
a passing car if those sounds occur at the same
time. The device cranks up the volume on both,
creating an incoherent din.
It's time we solve this problem. To produce a
better experience for hearing aid wearers, my lab
at Ohio State University, in Columbus, recently
applied machine learning based on deep neural networks to the task of
segregating sounds. We
have tested multiple versions of a digital filter that
not only amplifies sound
but can also isolate speech

By
DeL ia ng
Wang



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017

Contents
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 1
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 2
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - Contents
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 4
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 5
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 6
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 7
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 8
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 9
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 10
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 11
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 12
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 13
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 14
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 15
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 16
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 17
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 18
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 19
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 20
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 21
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 22
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 23
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 24
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 25
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 26
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 27
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 28
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 29
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 30
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 31
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 32
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 33
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 34
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 35
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 36
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 37
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 38
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IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 40
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IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 42
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 43
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IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 45
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 46
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 47
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 48
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 49
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 50
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 51
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IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 53
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 54
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 55
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - 56
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum - North American - March 2017 - Cover4
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