In this project, PhD student Ryan Barnsley at Cardiff University seeks to improve how bone-anchored hearing aids produce stereo sound, so people with hearing loss can tell where sound is coming from.
Project start date: October 2020
Project end date: September 2023
About the project
Bone-anchored hearing aids (BAHAs) restore hearing by vibrating the person’s skull, and sound is transmitted directly to the inner ear through the bone. One BAHA device stimulates both ears, meaning that sound signals transmitted from the BAHA are mixed between both ears, which limits a person’s stereo hearing.
The researchers have developed a way to cancel ‘cross-talk’ between the ears when a bone vibration device is used by people with normal hearing. Now, they hope to develop a way to fit bilateral BAHAs (a BAHA for each ear) to deliver better stereo hearing.
How it works
In the project, researchers will research how to cancel ‘cross-talk’ in both ears at the same time and measure how much this improves a person’s ability to understand speech. They will also measure how much this helps people to locate where sounds are coming from. Then, they will apply this technique to patients with bilateral BAHAs to understand if this can be practically implemented.
How will this research benefit people with hearing loss?
People who have hearing loss due to deformations of the middle ear, or non-cancerous skin growth (cholesteatoma) in the middle ear, would benefit from this research, as BAHAs for these conditions are the only treatment option.
The project is expected to improve stereo hearing, which will give BAHA users an improved ability to identify where sounds are coming from and to understand speech in noisy environment.
About the researcher
Ryan Barnsley is a PhD student in Professor John Culling’s lab at Cardiff University. His RNID-funded studentship for this project began in 2020.