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"Could you repeat that?" The reason you may have to say something twice when talking to older family members at Thanksgiving dinner may not be because of their hearing. Researchers at the University of Maryland have determined that something is going on in the brains of typical older adults that causes them to struggle to follow speech amidst background noise, even when their hearing would be considered normal on a clinical assessment.
In an interdisciplinary study published by the Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers Samira Anderson, Jonathan Z. Simon, and Alessandro Presacco found that adults aged 61-73 with normal hearing scored significantly worse on speech understanding in noisy environments than adults aged 18-30 with normal hearing. The researchers are all associated with the UMD's Brain and Behavior Initiative.
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Why is this the case? "Part of the comprehension problems experienced by older adults in both quiet and noise conditions could be linked to age-related imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neural processes in the brain," Presacco said. "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."
In short, they think signal processing is to blame, not signal transmission.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:46AM
Unless someone says my name when speaking to me in a crowded noise environment I usually miss what they say. I do have jet engine level tinnitus in both ears though. One interesting thing about having tinnitus, it actually went away for a few seconds under hypnosis. I could hear everything else, but the jet engines were gone. Still on the lookout for a cure, but so far not likely.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:18AM
Tinnitus is rather hard to treat because there's a lot of different causes that can apply. I've suffered from it since I was pretty young, for me it's almost entirely neurological, there's no damage to my hearing. For others there is actual hearing damage involved.
The only thing I've found that seems to work is having things to actually listen to. It's almost as if the parts of my brain that process sound need to have something to listen to constantly. If they don't, they generate their own sounds to process, which can drive me batty.
(Score: 1) by bug1 on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:18AM
I have a constant ringing in my ears, which i attribute to tinnitus, the only thing that has worked for me as reducing background noise to an absolute minimum, then after a few days the volume i hear reduces. Not very practical though...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 21 2016, @02:22AM
Tinnitus can also be a symptom of hypothyroidism. I would bet this age-related processing issue is too (80% of people over age 50 have some degree of reduced T4-to-T3 conversion, thus hypothyroidism at the tissue level). I sound like a broken record on this, but it's probably the most underdiagnosed and ignored of all medical issues.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:18AM
Jet level? Geez. Sounds rough. I have constant tingly bells like a cat.running around now. It is getting worse.
We need a cure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:02PM
Yes, it sounds exactly like when jet engines throttle up for takeoff. There's a slightly different pitch in each ear. It's from 2 1/2 decades of working in a noisy environment, and a few all day concerts.