Skip to content
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • News
  • About us
    • Our team
    • PhD students
    • Eriksholm’s timeline
    • History of hearing aids
    • Partnerships
    • Contact us
Back

Speech ABR: clinically-useful brainstem responses to continuous speech

Florine Bachmann

Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Hamish Innes-Brown

Senior Research Manager

Eriksholm Research Centre

Emina Alickovic

Principal Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Speech ABR: clinically-useful brainstem responses to continuous speech

Introduction

Auditory brainstem responses are small electrical signals generated in the ‘reptilian’ early part of the brain in response to sounds. Clinicians use these signals to objectively determine whether sounds are being transmitted from the ear to the brain. This can help with fitting hearing aids and assessing auditory system health. However, the sounds used are repetitive, artificial, and because they do not sound like speech, do not pass well through a hearing aid. In this project we are advancing towards using natural speech sounds as stimuli and improving the methods used to generate these responses, so that they can be used in an audiological context.

Aims

The big picture aim of this project is to determine what types of audiologically-relevant information could be obtained from brainstem responses estimated while the listener is hearing continuous natural speech, rather than artificial and repetitive sounds traditionally used.

Methodology

We use small sensors mounted in an elastic cap to record the electrical activity produced in the brainstem while the listener is hearing running speech sounds made either from earphones in the ear canal, via a loudspeaker, or via hearing aids.

Results

We have already shown that brainstem responses can be generated to natural speech in listeners with normal hearing. We have done this with the speech presented directly to the ear with insert-phones, where we have maximum control over the stimulus used, as well as when the speech is delivered via a loudspeaker in a normal room. We are now looking at data from hearing aid users – in one condition using insert-phones, and in another condition when the listeners are listening via their own hearing aids to speech from a loudspeaker.

Publications

Loading...
Bachmann, F.L., Kulasingham, J.P., Eskelund, K., Enqvist, M., Alickovic, E., Innes-Brown, H. (2024). Extending Subcortical EEG Responses to Continuous Speech to the Sound-Field. Trends in Hearing, 28. doi:10.1177/23312165241246596
Kulasingham, J. P., Bachmann, F. L., Eskelund, K., Enqvist, M., Innes‐Brown, H., & Aličković, E. (2024). Predictors for estimating subcortical EEG responses to continuous speech. PLOS ONE, 19 (2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297826

Team

Florine Bachmann

Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Hamish Innes-Brown

Senior Research Manager

Eriksholm Research Centre

Emina Alickovic

Principal Scientist

Eriksholm Research Centre

Kasper Eskelund 

Senior Researcher

Oticon A/S

View all

Partners

  • Automatic Control Group, Linköping University  

You may also be interested in

Loading...
Neural Correlates of Speech Understanding 
CURRENT
Neural Correlates of Speech Understanding 
4335,3008

Intent Decoding, Cognitive Hearing Science

Try to picture yourself with your friends and family. You are at a restaurant, surrounded by other p...
Try to picture yourself with your friends and family. You are at a restaurant, surrounded…
Optimizing Level-Dependent Auditory Brainstem Responses to continuous speech
CURRENT
Optimizing Level-Dependent Auditory Brainstem Responses to continuous speech
4335,1037,8022

Personalised Audiology

Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are typically obtained by averaging EEG reactions to repeated tr...
Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are typically obtained by averaging EEG reactions to repeated transient stimuli,…

You may also be interested in

Neural Correlates of Speech Understanding 
CURRENT
Neural Correlates of Speech Understanding 
4335,3008

Intent Decoding, Cognitive Hearing Science

Try to picture yourself with your friends and family. You are at a restaurant, surrounded by other p...
Try to picture yourself with your friends and family. You are at a restaurant, surrounded…
Optimizing Level-Dependent Auditory Brainstem Responses to continuous speech
CURRENT
Optimizing Level-Dependent Auditory Brainstem Responses to continuous speech
4335,1037,8022

Personalised Audiology

Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are typically obtained by averaging EEG reactions to repeated tr...
Auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are typically obtained by averaging EEG reactions to repeated transient stimuli,…

People are our most
valuable source of
insights

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

Youtube

  • Eriksholm Research Centre
  • Rørtangvej 20
  • DK-3070 Snekkersten
  • Denmark
We are a part of Oticon, a world leader in hearing care. We share the same philosophy that people are our main source of insights
Bliv testperson
  • +45 48 29 89 00
  • mail@eriksholm.com
  • Cookie policy
  • Disclaimer

© 2025 Eriksholm – Designed by Aveo web&marketing

Manage consent to cookies
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service expressly requested by the subscriber or user, or solely for the purpose of transmitting a communication via an electronic communication network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is necessary to create user profiles for the purpose of sending advertisements or to track the user on a website or across multiple websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}