A busy restaurant. A classroom full of chatter. A family gathering where several people are speaking at once. For many of us, these are familiar situations.
But for people with hearing loss, trying to follow one voice through the noise can be exhausting – and it can mean missing jokes, stories and the small moments that help us feel connected.
Keith, a 78-year-old retired schoolteacher, knows that feeling well. He says:
I used to love going to live concerts and the theatre but stopped doing both. I also avoided pubs and restaurants as the background noise overpowered the people I spoke to.”
Keith’s story shows why research matters. Hearing aids can make a huge difference, but they do not always solve one of the hardest everyday challenges: picking out speech when there is background noise. RNID-funded researchers are working to understand why noisy conversations can be so difficult – and how science could help make them easier to follow.
Across several projects, they are exploring:
- what happens in the brain when speech competes with background noise
- how to measure the mental effort involved in listening
- whether training could make noisy conversations easier to follow
- how hearing aids could become better at sharpening speech against background sound.
What is happening in the brain when noise gets in the way?
How the brain uses prediction to make sense of sound
Dr Przemyslaw Jarzebowski how our brain tries to predict what we will hear, based on lip movements and previous words in a sentence. The researchers want to understand how strongly the brain is using prediction to make sense of sound, and how this can change when there is background noise and age-related hearing loss. This could help reveal whether the brain uses prediction to compensate when sound information becomes less clear.
Dr Przemyslaw Jarzebowski’s Fellowship is co-funded by the Vivensa Foundation.
How brain cells help separate speech from background noise
Dr Christian Keine studies how individual brain cells respond when the listener is in quiet surroundings and when there is background noise. The research team will focus on the brain’s “stop” signals. These signals help sharpen the sounds we need to pay attention to, and to turn down less relevant background noise. By temporarily switching off those signals in individual brain cells, the team can test how important they are for understanding speech in noisy places.
For Dr Christian Keine, the motivation is clear:
Hearing connects us to the people around us, to conversation, music and everyday sounds that enrich our lives. When those connections are disrupted, the impact goes far beyond the ear.”
Understanding what happens in the brain is an important first step. But for people with hearing loss, the challenge is not only whether they can hear speech – it is how hard they have to work to follow it.
Can we measure how much effort listening takes?
Following conversation in a noisy place is not just about hearing the words. It also draws on attention, memory and concentration. Researchers call this “listening effort”.
For people with hearing loss, that effort can be much greater. Over time, it can become tiring enough to make social situations feel harder to manage.
Yet, listening effort is not routinely measured during hearing tests or hearing-aid fitting. And because many existing methods come from laboratory research, they may not fully reflect the effort people experience in everyday life.
Measuring listening effort in everyday life
Dr Kate Slade studies listening effort as people go about their everyday lives. Participants will wear small sensors that monitor heart activity, and they will also share information about what they are listening to and how tiring it feels.
The aim is to find practical markers of listening effort that reflect real-life listening situations, not just laboratory tests.
I hope my research can help highlight the challenges faced by people with hearing loss, show the importance of listening effort, and one day inspire change in audiological practice.”
Using the eyes to reveal listening effort
Professor Maria Chait and Xena Liu are testing whether our eyes can reveal how hard the brain is working to listen. This could help researchers and clinicians better understand individual listening difficulties and evaluate hearing technologies more effectively.
Their recent study showed that listening effort and attention can be tracked using simple, non‑invasive eye‑based measures. Using a carefully designed listening task and eye tracking, the researchers found that different eye movements may reveal some of the different processes involved in effortful listening, such as focusing on important sounds and blocking out distractions.
Measuring listening effort is one part of the puzzle. Another is whether training could make noisy conversations easier to follow.
Can training help people follow speech in noisy places?
Professor Emma Holmes and Bindiya Patel are studying whether auditory training could help people with age-related hearing loss follow speech more easily in noisy places.
The training uses listening tasks designed to improve how the brain processes sound. The research is based on the idea that people often find it easier to understand a voice once it has become familiar to them.
Participants, both with and without hearing loss, have been taking part in a computer-based task, lasting around 60 to 90 minutes. Researchers hope this work will contribute to the development of training apps that help speech stand out more clearly from background noise, making everyday communication easier for people with hearing loss.
Could hearing aids become better at cutting through background noise?
Professor Jennifer Linden and her team have developed a novel signal-processing algorithm that could one day be used in hearing aids. It is designed to enhance the brain’s normal responses to sound, with the aim of helping people pick out speech more easily in noisy environments.
I would like to see hearing aids and assistive devices become as useful and ubiquitous for treating hearing problems as spectacles are for treating vision problems. Currently they are not, in part because they just don’t work as well as spectacles do.
However, advances in understanding hearing and hearing loss are starting to make restoration of truly normal hearing to people with hearing loss a feasible goal.”
Looking to the future
By understanding how the brain separates speech from noise, how listening effort can be measured, and how hearing technology and training could improve understanding speech in noisy places, RNID-funded researchers are working towards a future where more people can stay connected to the people and moments that matter most.
This Christmas, Keith’s story reminds us of what is at stake: conversation, laughter, music and feeling part of the world around us. Your support can help RNID fund research that could make noisy conversations easier in the future – and help people with hearing loss find trusted information and support today.
How you can help this Christmas
Your support this Christmas could help fund vital hearing research. Thank you so much.