In environments with multiple talkers, humans can 'tune in' to a speaker of interest while ignoring competing voices. In such conditions, however, auditory cortices track the attended speech envelope rhythms (cortical tracking of speech, CTS) less accurately than in quiet, hindering intelligibility....
No actionable change for current clinical practice — this is early-stage neuroimaging research, but it supports continued interest in multisensory hearing aid and assistive device design.
Demonstrating that vibrotactile speech cues strengthen cortical attention to a target speaker opens a potential non-acoustic pathway for future hearing assistive technology.
- 01Speech-based vibrotactile stimulation improved brain tracking of a target speaker in noisy multi-talker settings.
- 02Neuroimaging (cortical tracking) used to objectively measure selective attention to speech.
- 03Published in Imaging Neuroscience (2026), a peer-reviewed journal.
- 04Findings are relevant to design of multisensory hearing aids and assistive devices.
- 05Study is at an early translational stage; no clinical device tested in hearing-impaired patients.
Speech-based vibrotactile stimulation enhances cortical tracking of attended speech in a multi-talker background.
studysupported- PMID
- 42488357
- DOI
- 10.1162/IMAG.a.1305.
- Journal
- Imaging Neuroscience
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Human participants in a controlled multi-talker listening experiment
- Intervention
- Speech-based vibrotactile stimulation during multi-talker listening
- Comparator
- No vibrotactile stimulation (control condition)
Primary outcomes
Cortical tracking of attended speech measured by neuroimaging