"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: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:34AM
This sounds like me - I've always struggled to hear people over background noise a lot more than others seem to, even from the age of 20.
I know it's not my hearing, because I can hear quiet noises very well. I just struggle to separate out a single voice from the crowd when the volume is up.
(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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Kilo110 on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:46AM
My sibling and I have this issue as well. I was aware of this even in high school. Like you, I can hear very quiet sounds easily, but I'm unable to separate out relevant sounds (voices) from background noises. My mother has the same issue, so I believe it came from her side.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:53AM
I know a lot of people like this, and they all without fail always immediately hear and understand the words, "next up for a line of coke!" regardless of their so-called "signal processing difficulties."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:32PM
What is this line? And do other soft drinks come with this new form of packaging?
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:27PM
They all work in CocaCola factories. Another line of coke clearly means overtime!
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Thursday October 20 2016, @08:29PM
Same here, I know my hearing is excellent because I've taken several (work mandated) hearing tests and my scores are among the highest, but I don't hear voices in noisy environments until I KNOW someone is speaking to me, and even then I often have problems understanding and need to ask for a repeat several times.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:59AM
It appears psychoacoustics has a lot to say in this regard.
There are hundreds of variables that go into the perception of sound (from room acoustics to natural variations in hearing) to where I've noticed higher pitched voices are easier to pickup from the background noise even though my hearing in that particular range is degrading. You can process recordings of speech to sound more clear even if the overall noise floor isn't significantly diminished.
Unfortunately most of the research I'm familiar with is secondhand through audiophiles and mix engineers, and as you can't even get consensus with sample rates and bit depth, it's going to remain in the realm of scientific woo for a while.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:23AM
Unfortunately most of the research I'm familiar with is secondhand through audiophiles and mix engineers, and as you can't even get consensus with sample rates and bit depth, it's going to remain in the realm of scientific woo for a while.
There's a subdiscipline called "auditory scene analysis" that deals specifically with this stuff, and they've been running experiments for at least 25-30 years trying to nail it down. Yes, computationally, it's really hard to model, and it's really hard to get computers to break down stuff the way humans do. But we actually know a LOT about human abilities to deal with this stuff -- there's plenty of research in journals on psychoacoustics and sound cognition about it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:28AM
I've always had that problem as well; it makes using a phone or talking in public a real PITA.
I learned a decade or so ago that it's actually a recognized condition called Auditory Processing Disorder (aka Central APD), and that in my case it's one of the autistic traits I inherited from my parents. CAPD Support's explanation [capdsupport.org] seems to be the best one I can find offhand. (Most of the other sites now seem to be oriented towards parents & teachers of APD kids.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday October 20 2016, @06:29AM
Maybe it's not a disorder at all.
Maybe it's a learned technique of discrimination between pointless blabbing of people around you so as to be able to hear the cracking twig, or the footsteps on the stairs. Then the pregnant pause and the stare of expectation alerts you that you tuned out too much.
With advancing age you've heard all the stories a hundred times, but that won't stop the retelling. You learn to listen around the noise or stop listening all together, to protect your own sanity.
Just because people stop listening to you doesn't mean you get to make up another DSM V code to describe a new disease.
Whippersnappers!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by aim on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:07PM
I'd add that it may also depend on your mastery of the language spoken. Way back when I was at university, in a foreign country, with their own special dialect of a language that I do master, I had to concentrate quite extremely to follow a conversation in a bar - where I'd have had much less trouble in my own language, or the "main variant" of this particular language.
These days I also tend to tune out irrelevant stuff, or I'm simply concentrating on something other and thus don't follow what's being said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:26PM
I was diagnosed with APD about 20 years ago: my hearing was perfect, but I couldn't spell phonetically because I'd "miss" certain sounds. This would also happen when reading (the part of the brain that interprets sound is needed for this) aloud because the problem was neurological and had nothing to do with my ears.
A teacher noticed the problem because she was convinced that I was cheating on spelling tests because my practice scores were around 10-20% and my test scores were either the same (didn't study) or 90-100% (when I'd memorise the sequence of letters for each word). The teacher was still convinced that I was cheating, somehow, even after she would give me the tests separately, so the administration got involved and a counselor contacted some specialist.
The test involved a standard hearing test (the kind with headphones and beeping noises with different volumes), a reading test with fake words (to control for literary), and a spelling test with similar fake words. The test results were very clear, but the only thing that changed was that the teacher let me take the tests with the class again and would congratulate me when I'd do well.
Listening requires all of my focus (no taking notes or multitasking) and I have to ask people to repeat themselves very often. I've worked hard to compensate by reading a lot and improving my listening skills, but I can understand that many would not be as motivated.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:49PM
In fact, that age bracket belongs to men with long exposure to toxic sources: wife, bratty daughter and mother in law.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:49PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by UltraDark on Thursday October 20 2016, @09:34PM
This sounds like you can't hear high frequencies very well as they convey the consonant sounds (vowel sounds are lower pitch). Top frequencies are the first to go as you get older.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Thursday October 20 2016, @01:37AM
When I was a kid (1960s) I had a series of tubes put into my left ear due to repeated ear infections. It left me with a heavily scarred eardrum, and I have about 50% hearing in the left ear. If you say something and I'm not paying attention I won't hear you, but get my attention and I'll hear you fine.
FWIW, it came out some 20 years ago that putting tubes in kid's ears did more harm than good.
We won't go into the rock concerts I went to in the 70's (Ted Nugent advertised as the loudest, he was right).
Relationship status: Available for curbside pickup.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:00AM
(1960s) I had a series of tubes
You had your own internet in the 1960s!? I'm impressed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:49AM
That suggests that middle aged and older folks need to get outside more, do hiking and camping and nature walks, away from motors and electronic gadgetry.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday October 20 2016, @02:59AM
For me it's an autistic trait: I can't "hear" the trees for all the forest.
My son and I notice the French fry alarms going off in fast food restaurants (he used to cover his ears... when my wife asked why, I said it was probably because of the alarms, which she hadn't noticed).
My hearing has tested very well, but was basically told that if there is a lot going on noise wise, I have trouble picking out the 'tree' because of all the forest.
If a tree falls in the woods does it make a noise? Not if all the tree huggers are yapping...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:23AM
After only a year of running a 35mm two-projector setup, which used multiple reels, I noticed the cue marks for years afterwards when watching movies on the TV. No one else watching the movies with me saw them. Nowadays, movies don't have cue marks for me to notice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @10:10AM
Thanks for the searchable term; after looking it up I finally found out after so many years what these strange symbols are for.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday October 22 2016, @12:56AM
sh*t... i thought everyone saw those, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Thursday October 20 2016, @11:31AM
@ gaark-
yes, me-tooism here...
it seems like my brain wants to give equal weight to ALL sounds coming in... my attention is constantly shifting among all the sounds... if a person is right in front of me, directly addressing me, i focus all my attention there, and the other sounds tend to get filtered out; but otherwise, i am lost in a sea of sound trying to pick out what is immediately necessary to hear...
party/gathering type affairs where a bunch of people are talking at once, are absolutely maddening: i can't hear ANYTHING because of hearing EVERYTHING... of course, this is not absolute, but it is a definite tendency...
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:09AM
Let's see how good your hearing is, when 2400 years old you be! Young whippersnappers! People under 150 these days just have no respect. What? What was that you said?
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday October 20 2016, @03:26AM
When someone talks to me, but doesn't prefix it with my name, I frequently don't respond: I am not conscious of the speech while it is happening. But when my attention is drawn to the speech, I can "rewind" and find that I did hear the speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2016, @05:25AM
Sometimes it is good to be hard of herring. Gets stuff done. Nii!
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday October 20 2016, @07:57AM
Hard of Hearing? It's Not Your Ears, It's Your Brain
Unless it is your ears, because people do have problems with their ears as well.
If a headline contains the word "your" then there's a 99% probability it's clickbait-style, and needs rewriting.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by DavePolaschek on Thursday October 20 2016, @04:29PM
If a headline contains the word "your" then there's a 99% probability it's clickbait-style, and needs rewriting.
I believe you mean, "If your headline..."
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 20 2016, @09:01AM
I think I hate the submitter (Phoenix) and the editor (janrinok).
Came to work, and mentioned this article to my boss. She says "huh?" so I repeated myself. She started to understand what I was saying, and went for the broom. I couldn't get out the door fast enough. DAMN that broom smarts when some old woman breaks it over your head!
(Just kidding guys - you both do great work)
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday October 21 2016, @12:30AM
What's dribbling out of your mouth is less important than what's going on in my mind.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.