How visual cues help restore speech sounds
Characterizing the recovery of spectral, temporal, and phonemic speech information from visual cues
This project explores whether seeing lip movements and facial cues helps people with hearing loss, cochlear implants, or acquired brain injury understand speech better.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Michigan at Ann Arbor NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (Ann Arbor, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11261611 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
You would take part in listening and watching tasks where speech is presented with and without visual cues like lip movements, mouth shape, and rhythmic mouth movements. The team will measure how well you can identify words and sounds and may record brain activity with noninvasive methods (for example EEG or MRI) to see how visual signals connect with speech-processing areas. Researchers will compare people with hearing loss, cochlear implants, or acquired brain injury to people with typical hearing to find where visual help is most effective. The goal is to create a model of how different visual features combine to restore missing speech information so it can guide rehabilitation.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Ideal candidates include adults with acquired brain injury, cochlear implants, or age-related hearing loss who have difficulty understanding speech in noisy or challenging listening environments.
Not a fit: People with severe vision loss, an inability to perform listening tasks, or communication problems unrelated to speech perception are less likely to receive direct benefit.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could improve communication strategies and rehabilitation tools that help people with hearing loss or brain injury understand speech in noisy situations.
How similar studies have performed: Prior studies show that lipreading and audiovisual cues can improve speech understanding in noisy settings, but combining multiple visual features with brain measurements in clinical populations is relatively novel.
Where this research is happening
Ann Arbor, United States
- University of Michigan at Ann Arbor — Ann Arbor, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Brang, David — University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
- Study coordinator: Brang, David
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.