Hearing through your fingers: Device that converts speech

Medical Express  June 3, 2019 An international team of researchers (Poland, Israel) hypothesized that they would be able to improve speech understanding under challenging conditions by exploiting the ability of the brain to integrate information coming simultaneously from different senses. They designed a minimalistic auditory-to-tactile sensory substitution device (SSD) that transforms low-frequency speech signals into tactile vibrations delivered on two fingertips. The reported improvement at the group level was 6 dB—a major difference considering that an increase of 10 dB represents a doubling of the perceived loudness. The device can provide immediate multisensory enhancement without any training. It has the […]