Hearing Systems DTU

16/01/2024

Hearing Systems Anniversary

On 3 October 2003, our Centre for Applied hearing Research (CAHR) was officially opened.
Last Friday we celebrated CAHR’s 20th, Hearing Systems’ 15th and Chess’s 10th anniversary, with colleagues, friends, and supporters. The afternoon started with speeches from DTU’s Senior Vice President Rasmus Larsen and our Head of Department Jan Ardenkjær-Larsen. Followed by a presentation from Andrew Oxenham and several short presentations from Hearing System’s researchers. The day ended with a celebration dinner and the opening of ‘CAHR Bar’.

Thank you to everyone that participated. We look forward to continuing our collaboration.

13/07/2023

Meet our new PhD student Mats Rekswinkel

Hello everyone! I am Mats, a Dutch biking enthusiast and I started a PhD position from the 1st of June at the Hearing Systems section. I’ve been in and around Copenhagen for a good two years, following the Engineering Acoustics MSc programme at DTU. This is where I got into contact with audiology and more specifically the area of Auditory Evoked Potentials. Quickly I developed a growing interest of this exciting ever-developing field, which will largely be the topic of my current PhD. For the next three years my project will focus on developing and investigating a newly proposed measurement paradigm using cortical responses to assess speech discrimination. This is primarily oriented at eventual applicability in hearing clinics but also aims at studying the fundamental mechanics of neural processing inside of the auditory cortex. You can find me in room 111 of building 352, DTU Health Tech or at Copenhagen Hearing and Balance Centre, Rigshospitalet. Always happy to chat, especially if it involves a cup of coffee!

11/03/2023

We are excited to announce that Maaike Van Eeckhoutte has recently joined our faculty as an assistant professor in clinical audiology. Maaike has been a postdoctoral researcher in Hearing Systems since 2020 and she was involved in the establishment of the Copenhagen Hearing and Balance Centre, which is a research collaboration between Hearing Systems and the Ear, Nose, Throat and Audiology department at Rigshospitalet (Copenhagen’s university hospital). Before that, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Centre for Audiology at Western University in Canada, and prior to that obtained her MSc and PhD degree in audiology and auditory neuroscience from the KU Leuven in Belgium. She received clinical audiological training in Belgium and the Netherlands. She is particularly interested in using brain imaging methods such as EEG and fNIRS, and has research experience with specific patient populations such as patients with cochlear implants, the elderly, and children with hearing impairments.

10/03/2023

We are happy to announce that Axel Ahrens has started a position as assistant professor in Hearing Systems.
Axel's research involves work on the perception of speech. Moreover, he is focusing on the communication between multiple participants, increasing ecological validity in hearing research, motion behavior, and audio-visual perception.
Axel obtained his MSc in engineering acoustics and his PhD on the topic of "Characterizing auditory and audio-visual perception in virtual environments” from DTU. Most recently he was a postdoc at the University of Southern Denmark. At Hearing Systems, Axel will continue his research on the perception of speech. Furthermore, he will participate in supervision activities and contribute to teaching activities.
We are very excited to welcome Axel as an assistant professor.

02/03/2023

Abstract submission for the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research (ISAAR 2023) is open now:
ISAAR 2023 will take place on 23-25 August 2023 in Nyborg, Denmark and will be supported by the William Demant Foundation.

At ISAAR 2023, we will have four overarching themes organized as symposium sessions, with the following invited speakers:

1. Imaging the auditory system (D. Keppler, A. Fridberger, M. Moerel, C. McKay)
2. The aging auditory system: Physiology and perception (J. Dubno, D. Fitzpatrick, A. Parthasarathy, N. Giroud)
3. Perceptual consequences of hearing loss & models of hearing (J. Resnik, N. Bramhall, A. Oxenham, S. Verhulst)
4. Machine listening and novel hearing technologies (J. Jensen, V. Hohmann, R. Serizel, D. Kolossa, O. Brimijoin)

In addition, we welcome contributions from a wide
range of topics including, for example, perceptual and physiological measures of auditory function, measures of hearing loss, auditory modeling, hearing-instrument signal processing, aided outcome measures, multi-sensory speech perception, communication in complex environments, advances in neurotechnology, and cognitive auditory neuroscience. Contributions within the symposium themes will be considered for either a contributed talk or a poster presentation in one of our extended poster sessions. Contributions outside the four overarching themes will be considered exclusively for poster presentations. We invite any scientific contributions within auditory and audiological research.

Abstract submission
Abstract submission deadline: 1. May 2023
Notification of acceptance: 1. June 2023

The ISAAR committee offers a limited number of scholarships to young scientists.
Please see www.isaar.eu for more information.

We very much look forward to seeing you at ISAAR 2023!

The ISAAR 2023 organizing committee:
Torsten Dau, Axel Ahrens, Abigail Anne Kressner, Jens Hjortkjær, Helia Relaño Iborra, Maaike Van Eeckhoutte, Caroline van Oosterhout
DTU - Technical University of Denmark

The concept of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research (ISAAR) is to bring together scientific communities to facilitate cross-disciplinary discussions around topics related to auditory research and audiology, including current physiological concepts, perceptual measures a...

22/02/2023

New paper!

In this study, Tushar Verma, Scott Charles Aker and Jeremy Marozeau studied how a tactile stimulus can affect the perception of two dimensions of timbre, namely impulsiveness and roughness.

Read the exciting paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23312165221138390


Danmarks Tekniske Universitet - DTU

The study tests the hypothesis that vibrotactile stimulation can affect timbre perception. A multidimensional scaling experiment was conducted. Twenty listeners...

07/02/2023

We are looking for motivated candidates for a 3-year PhD position. The project will explore listener behavior in environments with varying degrees of complexity and dynamics. Specifically, listeners will be monitored continuously using various sensors, such as motion and eye trackers, to record body and head-movement trajectories, as well as eye-gaze throughout the experimental tasks. The project is part of the Centre for Applied Hearing Research (CAHR) supported by Oticon, WSAudiology and GN Hearing.
The application deadline is March 15, 2023.

The Hearing Systems Section at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) seeks a qualified candidate for a 3-year PhD position. Hearing Systems is part of the department of Health Technology. Our research is concerned with auditory signal processing and perception, speech communication, audiology, b...

26/01/2023

Earlier this month three researchers from Hearing Systems attended the 14th Speech in Noise Workshop in Split, Croatia. The two-day workshop covered several aspects related to speech understanding: from physiological correlates to data-driven models and hearing compensation strategies. Abigail Anne Kressner gave an invited talk on her work investigating the relationship between spatial speech-in-noise and localization ability and presented a poster regarding The Danish Sentence Test (DAST). Philippe Gonzalez gave a plenum presentation about how the generalization gap of learning-based speech enhancement systems in noisy and reverberant environments can be assessed. Helia Relaño Iborra Relaño-Iborra presented a poster showing model predictions of individual differences in the speech perception of hearing-impaired listeners.

24/01/2023

New project on listening fatigue: Read about ALFi 👇👇

People with hearing impairment often report being tired and worn out by the end of the day and research suggests that hearing impairment is linked to increased fatigue. However not much is known about the real-world impact of listening fatigue.
The ALFi (Assessment of Listening Fatigue in daily life) project aims to predict listening fatigue as it occurs in the real world and to better understand the interaction of fatigue and hearing aid usage and satisfaction. The final goal is to suggest interventions to mitigate fatigue in HA users.
The problem with current studies on fatigue is, that studies performed in the laboratory environment need to be well controlled and cannot reflect everyday life fatigue. On the other hand, field studies (studies outside a laboratory environment) assess daily experience, but causal effects are difficult to study. The ALFi project is aiming for a hybrid approach where people with hearing loss are tested both in the field and in the lab. This will enable development of a computational model to predict fatigue in people with hearing impairment.
This project, which has just been kicked-off, is supported by the William Demant Foundation for 2 Postdocs (one at DTU, and one at KU) for a period of 2.5 years. One of Postdocs is Tirdad Seifi Ala who was one of the six PhD-students in the Hear-ECO project and recently successfully defended his PhD-thesis.
Eriksholm is represented in the project by Dorothea Wendt, Hamish Innes-Brown, and Jeppe Høy Christensen. External partners are Professor Ingrid Johnsrude from University of Western Ontario, Professor Torsten Dau from Hearing Systems DTU, Ass. Professor Matthew Apps from University of Birmingham, Professor Trine Flensborg-Madsen and Professor Naja Hulvej Rod, both from KU.

(Photo by Vlada Karpovich)

11/01/2023

Hearing Systems welcomes Dr. Hamish Innes-Brown as adjunct associate professor.
Dr. Hamish Innes-Brown is a Principal Scientist at Eriksholm Research Centre. His research focuses on functional imaging with a special interest in functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and brainstem-level EEG measures generated by natural sounds. Furthermore, he is interested in statistical learning methods and how these can be used to understand how the brain separates sounds.
Hamish completed his PhD in 2012 at Swinburne University of Technology (Australia) and he continued his research career at the Bionics Institute in Melbourne where he investigated the acoustic and perceptual cues that contribute to musical steam segregation in cochlear implant users. In the following years, he was affiliated with both the Bionics Institute (Australia) and KU Leuven (Belgium) where he investigated EEG measures of both simple and complex sound perception in normal-hearing and cochlear-implant users. During this period, he also established Australia’s first fNIRS laboratory. In 2019 he joined Eriksholm Research Centre, where he is currently the chair of the Research Strategy Group.
At Hearing Systems, Dr. Innes-Brown will contribute substantially to the activities at the Centre of Excellence for Hearing and Speech Sciences (CHeSS) and the Centre for Auditory Neuroscience. Furthermore, he will contribute as a co-supervisor to upcoming MSc and PhD project.
We are excited to start our collaboration with Hamish.

06/01/2023

We are happy to announce that Principal Scientist Dr. Dorothea Wendt joins Hearing Systems as adjunct associate professor.
Dr. Dorothea Wendt is a Principal Scientist at Eriksholm Research Centre. Her research involves work on the benefit of signal processing implemented in modern hearing aids on reduced listening effort and fatigue. She was the first to demonstrate how hearing aids can impact listening effort and she has helped popularize the use of pupillometry in hearing science.
Dorothea started her research career in Oldenburg (Germany) where she finished her PhD in 2013. From 2013-2017 she was a postdoctoral researcher with a dual affiliation at Hearing Systems and Eriksholm Research Centre. Since 2017 she has been a Researcher at Eriksholm with a guest senior researcher affiliation at DTU.
At Hearing Systems, Dr. Dorothea Wendt will continue her research of the physiological and behavioral consequences of a peripheral hearing loss on cognitive aspects of hearing. Furthermore, she will continue her supervision activities and contribute to teaching activities within the field of cognitive hearing science.

We are excited to continuing our collaboration with Dorothea.

06/01/2023

Tinnitus is a challenging disorder which may result from different etiologies and phenotypes and lead to different comorbidities and personal responses. There are currently no standard ways to subtype the different tinnitus forms. As a result, attempts to investigate tinnitus mechanisms and treatments have been challenged by the fact that the tinnitus population under study is not homogeneous.
This is the challenge the researchers Mie Jørgensen, Raul H. Sanchez Lopez and Torsten Dau will focus on in a new tinnitus project, that subgroups tinnitus patients based on their the hearing abilities. The project is carried out in collaboration between Hearing Systems, DTU Health Tech and the Copenhagen Hearing and Balance Centre, Rigshospitalet and is supported by Helsefonden and Interfond.
- “We suggest that subgrouping tinnitus patients based on a thorough examination of their hearing abilities offers the opportunity to investigate and treat more homogeneous groups of patients. This project will provide new knowledge about supra-threshold hearing abilities, such as loudness perception, binaural, spectral and temporal resolution in tinnitus patients that can help us gain a better understanding of the hearing deficits in the patients and how these are related to the tinnitus related distress” says Mie Jørgensen and elaborates
- “Furthermore, the vast majority of people suffering from tinnitus have a measurable hearing loss. However, hearing aid treatment is currently not successful for all tinnitus patients. These large individual differences with respect to the effect of hearing aid treatment suggest a potential that more personalized hearing aid fittings can lead to more successful tinnitus treatments. Here we propose that hearing aid fittings can be further personalized to tinnitus patients based on thorough examinations of patients’ hearing abilities.”
If successful, the knowledge obtained from this study could translate into more effective interventions for tinnitus patients, allowing more individualized and targeted treatments.