About Cognitive Outcome Measures at Ecological Signal-to-Noise Ratios and Cognitive-Driven Hearing Aid Signal Processing.

PURPOSE The purpose of this article is to discuss 2 questions concerning how hearing aids interact with hearing and cognition: Can signal processing in hearing aids improve memory? Can attention be used for top-down control of hearing aids? METHOD Memory recall of sentences, presented at 95% correct speech recognition, was assessed with and without binary mask noise reduction. A short literature review was performed on recent findings on new brain-imaging techniques showing potential for hearing aid control. CONCLUSIONS Two experiments indicate that it is possible to show improved memory with an experimental noise reduction algorithm at ecological signal-to-noise ratios and that it is possible to replicate these findings in a new language. The literature indicates that attention-controlled hearing aids may be developed in the future.