Improving hearing aid fitting using the speech-evoked auditory brainstem response

Measuring brain responses to speech may help improve the process of hearing aid fitting, especially in young children. Speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses (sABR) may be particularly useful because they provide a spectro-temporal representation of auditory neural activity in response to speech. However, use of the sABR in evaluating hearing aid performance has not been explored. This paper reviews recent work on measuring brain responses to speech, illustrates how sABR can provide insights into internal auditory processing, and proposes ways in which these responses may be used to improve hearing aid fitting.