Funding Awarded to Refine Visually Guided Hearing Aid

March 2014 — The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) awarded the Boston University College of Health and Rehabilitation Services with a five-year,  $2.75 million grant for the testing and refinement of a Visually Guided Hearing Aid prototype (VGHA). Typical hearing aids work by amplifying all sound in an area.  However, in many cases there may be sounds an individual would like to ignore.  The VGHA is a hearing aid which will allow the user to choose the sounds they listen to by using eye-tracker technology to guide the hearing aid’s microphones to the desired sound.  Currently the VGHA prototype is only lab-based, however plans for further development aim to make VGHA a “portable, wearable device.”