Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Vanheusden F.J., Kegler M., Ireland K., Georga C., Simpson D.M., Reichenbach T. and  Bell S.L.

Recent studies have shown that it is possible to measure brain responses to natural speech using electroencephalography (EEG). Such an approach could have applications to test whether hearing aids are making speech audible for patients, particularly in infants who cannot respond to sound. But first we need to know if we can measure responses through hearing aids. We explored this in older hearing impaired subjects listening to speech presented from a loudspeaker. Measurements were reliable with and without hearing aids, increasing evidence for the clinical application of the methods. Future work will test how measurements are affected by speech audibility.

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