A Step towards Neuro-Steered Hearing Aids: Integrated Portable Setup for Time- Synchronized Acoustic Stimuli Presentation and EEG Recording

Abstract

Aiming to provide a portable research platform to develop algorithms for neuro-steered hearing aids, a joint hearing aid - EEG measurement setup was implemented in this work. The setup combines the miniaturized electroencephalography sensor technology cEEGrid with a portable hearing aid research platform - the Portable Hearing Laboratory. The different components of the system are connected wirelessly, using the lab streaming layer framework for synchronization of audio and EEG data streams. Our setup was shown to be suitable for simultaneous recording of audio and EEG signals used in a pilot study (n=5) to perform an auditory Oddball experiment. The analysis showed that the setup can reliably capture typical event-related potential responses. Furthermore, linear discriminant analysis was successfully applied for single-trial classification of P300 responses. The study showed that time-synchronized audio and EEG data acquisition is possible with the Portable Hearing Laboratory research platform.

Keywords

• portable hearing laboratory
• open master hearing aid
• openmha
• hearing aids
• ceegrid
• around-theear eeg
• eeg
• portable setup
• auditory oddball