Communication sits at the very heart of all our social interactions. It’s a superpower so natural to us that we often don’t consider how valuable it actually is. 

 

As we age, most of us will find it more challenging to hear speech in noisy places. Even just listening to a friend or discussing projects with colleagues requires a huge amount of work. Whilst our ears are receiving the sounds, it’s our brain that actually processes them and applies meaning to what we hear. 

 

Research has shown that listening requires much more effort than talking. When we listen, we need to hold onto the thoughts and ideas that occur within a conversation until it’s our turn to speak, and this can take a lot of effort. Whilst we’re doing this, our brains also have to filter out the sounds we want to focus on - the speaker, for example - and to tune out any other distracting background noises.

There are two parts to our hearing: the first is our ears which make up our physical hearing capacity, the second is our brain and how well it processes the different sounds we hear. Both parts of our hearing affect how well we can hear speech in noisy places. No matter your age or hearing ability, everyone finds it harder to hear when there’s lots of background noise, but a little bit of practise with this can help. Our ability to focus on speech in background noise tends to improve when we expose our brains to controlled environmental stimuli. Research undertaken at eargym has clearly helped to show this important link in understanding.