Abstract
People can separate and comprehend voices from a mixed signal of simultaneously spoken voices. This kind of ability was defined as voice separation ability, and it is considered to relate to brain cognitive function. To develop an easy-used check and recovery system of age-related cognitive deficit, a quantitative measurement method of voice separation ability was proposed in this paper. Correspondingly, the measurement experiments on subjects in different ages were done. The measurement result showed that the voice separation ability obviously declines with aging, and the proposed method was proved feasible to evaluate brain cognitive function to a certain extent. Furthermore, through brain function mapping analysis by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) system, the brain cortex areas associated with voice separation ability was primarily determined. The activated cortex areas showed that voice separation ability correlates to brain cognitive function, and the proposed method was further proved valid. Consequently, this quantitative measurement method is considered possible to be applied to early-detection and early-recovery of cognitive deficits in future work.
