Frequency-Based Alignment of EEG and Audio Signals Using Contrastive Learning and SincNet for Auditory Attention Detection

Humans exhibit a remarkable ability to focus auditory attention in complex acoustic environments, such as cocktail parties. Auditory attention detection (AAD) aims to identify the attended speaker by analyzing brain signals, such as electroencephalography (EEG) data. Existing AAD algorithms often leverage deep learning's powerful nonlinear modeling capabilities, few consider the neural mechanisms underlying auditory processing in the brain. In this paper, we propose SincAlignNet, a novel network based on an improved SincNet and contrastive learning, designed to align audio and EEG features for auditory attention detection. The SincNet component simulates the brain's processing of audio during auditory attention, while contrastive learning guides the model to learn the relationship between EEG signals and attended speech. During inference, we calculate the cosine similarity between EEG and audio features and also explore direct inference of the attended speaker using EEG data. Cross-trial evaluations results demonstrate that SincAlignNet outperforms state-of-the-art AAD methods on two publicly available datasets, KUL and DTU, achieving average accuracies of 78.3% and 92.2%, respectively, with a 1-second decision window. The model exhibits strong interpretability, revealing that the left and right temporal lobes are more active during both male and female speaker scenarios. Furthermore, we found that using data from only six electrodes near the temporal lobes maintains similar or even better performance compared to using 64 electrodes. These findings indicate that efficient low-density EEG online decoding is achievable, marking an important step toward the practical implementation of neuro-guided hearing aids in real-world applications. Code is available at: https://github.com/LiaoEuan/SincAlignNet.