Electro-Haptics Research

A new approach to implant listening

Hearing loss is a global challenge, particularly in countries with ageing populations. Unaddressed hearing loss poses an annual global cost of $750 billion and recent work has shown a strong link between hearing loss and dementia. Over a billion young people are at risk of hearing loss because of the way they listen to music.

Hundreds of thousands of people depend on implanted electronic devices to hear. These devices, known as auditory or cochlear implants, aren't perfect. Implant users often have difficulty knowing where sounds originate, are commonly unable to enjoy music, and find it difficult to understand speech when there is background noise - like in a busy workplace, crowded restaurant or chaotic classroom. We have a new approach to solve this problem by transferring crucial sound information through the skin.

We are developing a low-cost haptic device that could revolutionise the treatment of hearing loss.

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Implants in noise

Cochlear implant users struggle to understand speech in noisy environments.

People with auditory implants hear the world in a very different way to people with healthy hearing. In an implant user, the sound that is usually transmitted to the brain by thousands of extraordinarily sensitive cells in the ear is instead transmitted by just 22 micro-electrodes. This means that the information transmitted to the brain is severely limited.

We've made a quick demo that simulates how hard it can be for auditory implant users to understand speech in complex sound environments. It's available to use for free as a teaching or demonstrating tool (YouTube or Download).

Note: these are just simulations based on models of how cochlear implants work with the brain. Cochlear implant users experience their device in different ways depending on a range of factors.

Implants and Music

Note: these are just simulations based on models of how cochlear implants work with the brain. Cochlear implant users experience their device in different ways depending on a range of factors.

Music sounds very different to implant users. They can struggle to distinguish different pitches, and they have poor access to the quality, or "timbre", of sounds.

This short demo that simulates what it is like to hear music as a auditory implant user. Like the demo above, it's available to use for free as a teaching or demonstrating tool (YouTube or Download).

Hearing through your skin

"The brain takes information from the senses to build a model of the world. When information is missing from one sense, we can use another sense to add it back in." - Dr Mark Fletcher, principal investigator

Our research is all about finding ways to send crucial sound information through the skin as small vibrations. We've shown that this can work in the lab–now we're taking it to the real world.

We are developing a wrist-worn device that we have shown can improve implant users’ speech understanding and could transform their lives.

Our new haptic device

Discreet: we're developing a slim, discreet wrist worn device that won't get in the way of daily activities.

Precise: we're focused on making sure our vibrations are reproduced perfectly in sync with the sound, without any distortion of the signal.

Comfortable: a priority in our design and manufacture process has been making the mosaicOne lightweight and comfortable to wear for long periods.

Quiet: our algorithms and motors have been carefully developed so that they are near-silent.

This short video shows people reacting when listening to music and feeling it through the first prototype of our mosaicOne haptic device. We've been working hard to improve our device and get it ready to be used outside of the lab. Further iterations of the mosaicOne will be coming very soon!

Training at home

Learning to use new information is an important part of the electro-haptic effect. We're building a remote training system to see how people learn to use electo-haptic stimulation over time.

Our research uses RealSpeech, an auditory training app developed by Dr Mark Fletcher and Dr Ian Wiggins from the electro-haptics team. RealSpeech has a large library of talkers and background environments, over 20 hours of synchronised high-definition video and audio, and is set up for remote data collection.

Virtual acoustics

Working with the University of Southampton Virtual Acoustics and Audio Engineering Research Group, we're developing a system for creating carefully controlled realistic sound environments for use in the lab, in the clinic, and at home. Currently, a large, acoustically-treated space and an expensive system with several loudspeakers in a ring around the listener is required to create such sound environments. We hope our system can opening up the possibility of more realistic testing much more widely for clinics and research labs and allow for much more sophisticated at-home training and testing.

Publications and presentations

Our new paper in Nature Scientific Reports

Fletcher, M.D., Hadeedi, A., Goehring, T., & Mills, S.R. (2019) Electro-haptic enhancement of speech-in-noise performance in cochlear implant users. Scientific Reports (pdf)

Our first paper on this work, published in Trends in Hearing

Fletcher, M.D., Mills, S.R., & Goehring, T. (2018) Vibro-Tactile Enhancement of Speech Intelligibility in Multitalker Noise for Simulated Cochlear Implant Listening, Trends in Hearing (pdf)
In the top 3% of the 12.5 million research outputs scored by Altmetric
2nd most discussed article ever to be published in Trends in Hearing

Our talk at the National Cochlear Implant Users’ Association AGM

Thank you to the National Cochlear Implant Users' Association for hosting Carl's talk on the project

Electro-haptics visits University College London

Thank you to everyone at UCL Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences (SHaPS) for hosting Mark's talk on Electrohaptics research

Mark's talk at Nottingham Trent University School of Engineering and Technology

Thank you to everyone at Nottingham Trent for hosting our talk on Electro-Haptics

Our presentation at the British Society of Audiology

Fletcher, M., Hadeedi, A., Goehring, T., & Mills, S. (2018). Using tactile stimulation to improve speech-in-noise performance in cochlear implant users. British Society of Audiology Basic Auditory Science 2018

Our new device at the British Cochlear Implant Group meeting

The mosaicOne prototype shakes things up at BCIG
Our new poster from the meeting (pdf)

Media and outreach

Mark talks about neuroscience and the Electro-Haptics Project to secondary-school students for the Smallpiece Trust

Thank you to everyone for coming and to the Smallpiece Trust and University of Southampton for organising this wonderful event.

Our work featured in The Conversation

Research workshop at the University of Cambridge

Electro-Haptics Workshop at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. Working with researchers from the Cambridge Hearing network and a visiting group from the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d’Acoustique, CNRS, Marseille.

Some of the professional bodies that have shared our work:

Funding

£500k grant to support Electro-Haptics Research

The Electro-Haptics Research project is now supported by grants awarded by the Oticon Foundation and the Danish Innovation Fund
The new multi-centre project is led by Dr Mark Fletcher (University of Southampton), with a team from the University of Southampton, University of Iceland, University of Nottingham, Danish Technical University and Oticon Medical.
Researchers will be working on ways to improve CI listening using a new haptic device.

£155k grant to support Ahmed Bin Afif, our new PhD student

The Electro-Haptics Research project has a new Post-Graduate Researcher, Ahmed Bin Afif.
Funding from King Saud University to support his research into improving CI hearing with haptic stimulation.

£80k grant to support our Virtual Acoustics project

The Electro-Haptics Research project has a post-doctoral researcher, Eric Hamdan, thanks to funding awarded by the Oticon Foundation.
The team now also includes Associate Professor Filippo Fazi who, leads the University of Southampton Virtual Acoustics and Audio Engineering Research Group, and Professor Nicci Campbell from the University of Southampton Auditory Implant Service, who's research focuses on the development of more realistic listening tests.