Free Press Journal

Hearing disabilities is linked to your brain, not ears: study



Washington: Do you ask people to repeat their words during conversation? Researchers at the University of Maryland have determined that something is going on in the brains of typical older adults that cause them to struggle to follow speech amidst background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal on a clinical assessment, reports ANI.

Also Read: Gene linked to age-related hearing loss identified




In the younger subject group, the midbrain generated a signal that matched its task in each case, looking like speech in the quiet environment, and speech clearly discernable against a noisy background in the noise environment.

But in the older subject group, the quality of the response to the speech signal was degraded even when in the quiet environment, and the response was even worse in the noisy environment. “For older listeners, even when there isn’t any noise, the brain is already having trouble processing the speech,” said researcher Simon.


“This imbalance could impair the brain’s ability to correctly process auditory stimuli and could be the main cause of the abnormally high cortical response observed in our study.” “Older people need more time to figure out what a speaker is saying,” Simon noted.

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