Dr. Ian Bruce

The main interests of my lab are in the areas of biomedical engineering and signal processing applied to the auditory system. The primary application is to use engineering methods to study and model the physiological mechanisms that contribute to hearing loss and tinnitus and to improve assistive devices for the hearing impaired such as hearing aids and cochlear implants and to treat tinnitus.

Ongoing research projects include:

• Computational modelling of sound processing by the mammalian auditory system
• Physiologically-based prediction of speech intelligibility and quality
• Characterizing and modelling noise-induced, age-related, and genetic hearing loss
• Electrophysiological and behavioural measures of tinnitus and hearing loss
• Modelling of cochlear implant stimulation of the auditory nerve
• Model-based evaluation and design of hearing aids and cochlear implants
• Behavioural, electrophysiological and acoustical evaluation of hearing aids in complex listening environments, including speech and music perception
• 3D acoustical signal processing

Did you know…
A paper written by Dr. Ian Bruce, Laurel Carney (Adjunct Professor) and Muhammad Zilany (a former PhD student) is the most-cited paper in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America over the 20 month period from January 2015 to August 2016.

Additional roles:

Associate Member of School of Computational Science and Engineering

Associate Director of the LIVELab.

Associate Member of the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.

Selected

Boulet, J., White, M., and Bruce, I. C. (2016)
Temporal considerations for stimulating spiral ganglion neurons with cochlear implants
JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH IN OTOLARYNGOLOGY 17(1):1–17

Zilany, M. S. A., Bruce, I. C., and Carney, L. H. (2014)
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 135:283–286
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 135:283–286

Recognized as the most cited article in JASA for the period Jan. 2015–Aug. 2016

Tabibi, S., Boulet, J., Dillier, N., and Bruce, I. C. (2021)

Phenomenological model of auditory nerve population responses to cochlear implant stimulation
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE METHODS 358:109212

Bruce, I. C., Erfani, Y., and Zilany, M. S. A. (2018)
A phenomenological model of the synapse between the inner hair cell and auditory nerve: Implications of limited neurotransmitter release sites
HEARING RESEARCH 360:40–54

Wirtzfeld, M. R., Ibrahim, R. A., and Bruce, I. C. (2017)
Predictions of speech chimaera intelligibility using auditory nerve mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues
JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH IN OTOLARYNGOLOGY 18(5):687–710

Recent
Tabibi, S., Boulet, J., Dillier, N., and Bruce, I. C. (2021). “Phenomenological model of auditory nerve population responses to cochlear implant stimulation,” Journal of Neuroscience Methods 358:109212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2021.109212

Nagathil, A., Göbel, F., Nelus, A., and Bruce, I. C. (2021). “Computationally efficient DNN-based approximation of an auditory model for applications in speech processing,” in Proceedings of 46th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP2021), IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, pp. 301– 305. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9413993

Tabibi, S., Kegel, A., Lai, W. K., Bruce, I. C., and Dillier, N. (2019). “Measuring temporal response properties of auditory nerve fibers in cochlear implant recipients,” Hearing Research 380:187–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2019.07.004

Koning, R., Bruce, I. C., Denys, S., and Wouters, J. (2018). “Perceptual and model-based evaluation of ideal time-frequency noise reduction in hearing impaired listeners,” IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering 26(3):687–697. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2018.2794557

Bruce, I. C., Erfani, Y., and Zilany, M. S. A. (2018). “A phenomenological model of the synapse between the inner hair cell and auditory nerve: Implications of limited neurotransmitter release sites,” Hearing Research 360:40–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2017.12.016

Roberts, L. E., Bruce, I. C., and Ganz Sanchez, T. (2018). “Tinnitus and hyperacusis: relationship, mechanisms, and initiating conditions,” in Hyperacusis and Disorders of Sound Intolerance: Clinical and Research Perspectives, eds. M. Fagelson and D. M. Baguley, Plural Publishing, Inc., San Diego, chapter 6. https://www.pluralpublishing.com/publications/hyperacusis-and-disorders-of-sound-intolerance-clinical-and-research-perspectives

Paul, B. T., Waheed, S., Bruce, I. C., and Roberts, L. E. (2017). “Subcortical amplitude modulation encoding deficits suggest evidence of cochlear synaptopathy in normal-hearing 18–19 year olds with higher lifetime noise exposure,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142(5):EL434–440. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5009603

Wirtzfeld, M. R., Pourmand, N., Parsa, V., and Bruce, I. C. (2017). “Predicting the quality of enhanced wideband speech with a cochlear model,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142(3):EL319–325. http://doi.org/10.1121/1.5003785

Wirtzfeld, M. R., Ibrahim, R. A., and Bruce, I. C. (2017). “Predictions of speech chimaera intelligibility using auditory nerve mean-rate and spike-timing neural cues,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 18(5):687–710. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-017-0627-7

Bruce, I. C. (2017). “Physiologically based predictors of speech intelligibility,” Acoustics Today Spring 2017 Issue 13(1):28–35. https://acousticstoday.org/issues/2017AT/2017Spring/#p=30

Boulet, J., and Bruce, I. C. (2017). “Predictions of the contribution of HCN half-maximal activation potential heterogeneity to variability in intrinsic adaptation of spiral ganglion neurons,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 18(2):301–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-016-0605-5

Moncada-Torres, A., van Wieringen, A., Bruce, I. C., Wouters, J., and Francart, T. (2017). “Predicting phoneme and word recognition in noise using a computational model of the auditory periphery,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 141:300–312. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4973569

Paul, B. T., Bruce, I. C., and Roberts, L. E. (2017). “Evidence that hidden hearing loss underlies amplitude modulation encoding deficits in individuals with and without tinnitus,” Hearing Research 344:170–182. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2016.11.010

Seeber, B. U. and Bruce, I. C. (2016). “The history and future of neural modeling for cochlear implants,” Network: Computation in Neural System 27(2–3):53–66, Special Issue on “Computational modelling of cochlear implants”. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0954898X.2016.1223365

Takanen, M., Bruce, I. C., and Seeber, B. U. (2016). “Phenomenological modelling of electrically stimulated auditory nerve fibers: A review,” Network: Computation in Neural System 27(2–3):157–185, Special Issue on “Computational modelling of cochlear implants”. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0954898X.2016.1219412

Boulet, J., White, M., and Bruce, I. C. (2016). “Temporal considerations for stimulating spiral ganglion neurons with cochlear implants,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 17(1):1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-015-0545-5

Ian C. Bruce was born in Bendigo, Vic., Australia, in 1969. He received the B.E. (electrical and electronic) degree from The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic., in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Otolaryngology, The University of Melbourne.

From 1993 to 1994, he was a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Department of Bioelectricity and Magnetism, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, from 1998 to 2001. Since 2002, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, currently at the rank of Professor. His research interests include auditory modeling, hearing aids, cochlear implants, tinnitus, neural coding of speech, digital speech processing, and stochastic processes. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Dr. Bruce is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a Member of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, and a Registered Professional Engineer in Ontario.

B.Eng. ; Ph.D. (University of Melbourne, Australia)