bioRxiv Science⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.64898/2025.12.02.691416

Real-life ear-EEG Recordings of Auditory Responses to Ambient Sounds

Comoglio, J.·Duan, B.·Rands Bertelsen, A.·Lind Kappel, S.·Kidmose, P.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Despite being one of the most researched neural responses, auditory potentials have primarily been measured in controlled laboratory environments. However, there is a big interest in measuring auditory potentials in more naturalistic environments, with stimuli resembling, to a higher degree, natural sounds. The objective of this study is to investigate auditory evoked potentials elicited by naturally occurring sounds in real-life environments. The paper presents an integration of a portable hearing aid research platform and a portable ear-EEG platform. This setup was validated through recordings of an Auditory Steady State Response (ASSR), elicited by real-time amplitude modulation of the ambient sound at 40Hz. Recordings were conducted in real-life under three conditions: walking and sitting with open and closed eyes. In addition to ear-EEG, scalp EEG was recorded as a reference. For analysis, EEG signals were categorized into three groups: scalp channels, cross-ear channels, and within-ear channels. For each condition and channel group, the signal-to-noise (SNR) of the ASSR was calculated. The ASSR was statistically significant across all channel groups and conditions. A post-hoc analysis assessed the recording duration required to obtain a significant ASSR, revealing that 10 minutes were enough for within ear ear-EEG for all but two cases, whereas less than 7 minutes were sufficient for all but one case when using scalp-EEG. Clinical relevanceThe Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) is a versatile tool for assessing various characteristics of the auditory pathway. The ability to measure ASSR in real-life conditions using ambient sound could facilitate the development of hearing aids capable of dynamically adapting to the users current hearing loss.

Explore related subjects

neurosciencePreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Comoglio, J., Duan, B., Rands Bertelsen, A., Lind Kappel, S., Kidmose, P.. 2025-12-04. Real-life ear-EEG Recordings of Auditory Responses to Ambient Sounds. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.02.691416

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Attention Across Scales: From Individual Variation to Social Hierarchies and Brain Networks in Semi-Free-Ranging Macaques

Attention is a fundamental brain function supporting perception, decision-making, and social behavior, and its dysfunction profoundly impairs daily life. It is both dynamic and stable, varying across observations and individuals, changing across the lifespan, and being shaped by social and environmental experience. Yet capturing this complexity remains a central challenge in neuroscience. Here, we integrated longitudinal behavioral assessments of semi-free-ranging macaques living in naturalistic social groups with resting-state fMRI. We quantified performance across days, ages, and social hierarchies and related it to intrinsic brain organization. Distinct attentional phenotypes emerged, including individuals with reduced attentional control. Performance followed an inverted-U lifespan trajectory, improving from childhood to adulthood before declining. Social status modulated attentional performance. Critically, nonlinear lifespan trajectories and associations with individual attentional differences were most clearly expressed in frontoparietal connectivity. Together, these findings reveal how sustained attention is organized across scales, providing a biological framework for its individual diversity, social modulation, and neural basis.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Decoding natural scenes from patterned optogenetic responses in mouse visual cortex

A central challenge in developing visual cortical prostheses is to determine how visual stimuli should be transformed into effective patterns of cortical stimulation. Although advances in stimulation technologies, including optogenetics, provide increasingly precise control over cortical activity, it remains unclear whether artificially evoked activity can reproduce the information content of naturally evoked visual representations. Here we establish a quantitative framework for evaluating visual encoding strategies by decoding cortical responses evoked by natural vision and patterned optogenetic stimulation. We developed a novel dual-modal paradigm in awake mice to bridge the gap between endogenous photostimulation and artificial network driving. By co-expressing the high-performance calcium indicator GCaMP6s and the red-shifted, ultra-sensitive opsin rsChRmine-oScarlet in the primary visual cortex (V1), we successfully translated dynamic natural movie frames into patterned, spatiotemporal optogenetic stimulation. Quantitative comparisons of macro-scale dynamics demonstrated that this patterned optogenetic injection evokes cortical states highly comparable and representationally aligned with those driven by actual visual photostimulation. To systematically evaluate the fidelity of these responses, we developed STAR, a deep learning model featuring spatial and temporal attention mechanisms, and successfully reconstructed the frames of natural movies from V1 signals under both experimental modalities. Collectively, our results demonstrate that complex sensory information can be both naturally encoded and synthetically injected into V1 circuits with high decoding fidelity. This work provides an empirical and computational proof-of-concept for intelligent, closed-loop biomimetic encoders, establishing a robust framework for next-generation cortical visual neuroprostheses and bidirectional brain-machine interfaces.

neuroscience↗
bioRxiv2026

Why Is Spontaneous Blink Timing Informative? An Adaptive Scheduling Perspective

Spontaneous eye blinks have long been linked to cognitive processing, yet how task demands shape blink timing and its relationship to behavioral performance remains unclear. We examined spontaneous blink behavior in 576 adults performing two variants of the Continuous Performance Task (CPT). Blink occurrence and timing were most strongly modulated by the experimental condition in the more demanding CPT-AX task, whereas their association with response time was stronger in the CPT-X task, where more consistent blink timing predicted faster responses. This dissociation suggests that task structure changes not only blink behavior but also the behavioral relevance of blink timing. These findings are consistent with an adaptive scheduling account of spontaneous blinking and provide a conceptual framework for understanding when and why blink timing contains chronometric information about ongoing cognition.

neuroscience↗