Interspeech 2024 Special Session: Biosignal-enabled Spoken Communication

Organizers

• Kevin Scheck (University of Bremen, Germany)
• Peter Wu (UC Berkeley, USA)
• Dr. Siqi Cai (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• Dr. Yashish Siriwardena (University of Maryland College Park, USA)
• Prof. Tanja Schultz (University of Bremen, Germany)
• Prof. Gopala Anumanchipalli (UC Berkeley, USA)
• Prof. Carol Espy-Wilson (University of Maryland College Park, USA)
• Prof. Satoshi Nakamura (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
• Prof. Prasanta Kumar Ghosh (Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India)
• Prof. Alan W Black (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
• Prof. Haizhou Li (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Introduction

The main topic of this special session is speech-related biosignals, such as of articulatory or neurological activities during speech production or perception. Since these  biosignals reflect human speech processes, they can serve as alternative modalities to the acoustic signal for speech-driven systems. Therefore, biosignal-enabled speech systems have the potential to enable spoken communication when the acoustic speech signal is not available or perceivable. For instance, Silent Speech Interfaces are developed to restore the ability of spoken communication for speech-impaired persons, e.g., after a laryngectomy. The aim is to enable spoken communication by predicting the acoustic speech signal from biosignals such as Electromyography (EMG), Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA), or Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI). Likewise, biosignals related to speech perception, such as Electroencephalography (EEG), are investigated for neuro-steered hearing aids to detect selective auditory attention to single out and enhance the attended speech stream. Progress in the field of speech-related biosignal processing will lead to the design of novel biosignal-enabled speech communication devices and speech rehabilitations for everyday situations.

With the special session "Biosignal-enabled Spoken Communication", we aim to bring together researchers working on biosignals and speech processing in order to exchange ideas on interdisciplinary topics.

Topics

Topics of interest for this special session include, but are not limited to:

• Processing of biosignals capturing respiratory, laryngeal, or articulatory activity during speech, e.g., Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA), Electromyography (EMG), High Speed Nasopharyngoscopy (HSN), Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI), videos of lip movements, etc.
• Speech-related processing of biosignals reflecting brain activity, such as Electroencephalography (EEG), Electrocorticography (ECoG), or functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
• Application of biosignals for speech processing tasks, e.g., speech recognition, synthesis, enhancement, voice conversion, or  auditory attention detection.
• Utilization of biosignals to increase the explainability or performance of acoustic speech processing methods.
• Development of novel machine learning algorithms, feature representations, model architectures, as well as training and evaluation strategies for improved performance or to address common challenges.
• Application of methods successful in acoustic speech processing to biosignals, e.g., self-supervised learning, knowledge distillation, end-to-end training, etc.
• Health-focused applications of biosignal processing, such as speech restoration, training and therapy, or (mental) health assessments.
• Other applications, such as speech-related brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), speech communication in noisy environments, or acoustic-free speech communication for preserving privacy.

Paper Submission and Session Format

Paper submissions must conform to the format defined in the Interspeech 2024 author resources. When submitting the paper in the Interspeech electronic paper submission system, please indicate that the paper should be included in the Special Session  Biosignal-enabled Spoken Communications. All submissions will take part in the normal paper review process.

The session format will either be a poster session or oral presentations, depending on the number of accepted papers. We will therefore inform participants about the format shortly after the acceptance notification (June 6th, 2024)

Important Dates

Submission portal opened: January 20th, 2024
Paper submission deadline: March 2nd, 2024
Paper update deadline: March 11th, 2024
Acceptance notification: June 6th, 2024

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact either Kevin Scheck,Peter Wu, Siqi Cai, or Yashish Siriwardena.