Dal study aims to help those who are hard of hearing

WATCH: Dalhousie University researchers are looking at ways to improve the quality of life for those who are hard of hearing. Julia Wong reports.

HALIFAX – Researchers from Dalhousie University want to improve the quality of life for those who are hard of hearing.

Typically, those experiencing hearing loss use hearing aids but Alexandria Muise-Hennessey, a master’s student in psychology and neuroscience, is researching whether improving an individual’s cognitive abilities may help them even more.

The master’s student said speech perception, hearing ability and memory are all factors of an individual’s hearing.

Muise-Hennessey is conducting an experiment with those who have normal hearing. She is putting them through a series of tests, such as showing a sequence of letters to test memory and having participants pick out words of a sentence they hear without background noise to interfere and then with background noise added. The tests are designed to examine how people process and understand language.

Participants undergo the tests while wearing a cap with electrodes that measure their brain activity. Muise-Hennessey then analyzes and compares the data.

“We’re trying to figure out if there’s anything similar between people that maybe explains why they’re good at speech perception. We have all these different factors that we’re looking at and we’re wanting to see if anything can help predict how well they might do in speech perception,” she said.

“Part of language processing, especially speech perception, it relies in part on hearing abilities. But it also relies on other factors like how well you’re able to guess what someone is saying and other factors like memory.”

Dr. Aaron Newman, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, said the study is necessary because those who have hearing aids often still have trouble.

“People will get hearing aids and objectively they’ll be able to hear better. Sounds will be louder for them but they’ll still have trouble actually understanding speech and using their hearing aid in a functional way,” he said.

Newman said a hearing aid provides the mechanical means to improving hearing but that is only part of the battle.

“The signal [from the hearing aid] has to get to the brain in a way that’s loud enough that the brain can make sense of it. But once it gets to the brain, that’s where all these cognitive factors come into play. A hearing aid isn’t going to affect those cognitive factors, like your memory and your attention.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "The signal [from the hearing aid] has to get to the brain in a way that's loud enough that the brain can make sense of it. But once it gets to the brain, that's where all these cognitive factors come into play. A hearing aid isn't going to affect those cognitive factors, like your memory and your attention."

Mary Cameron, 33, of Halifax started losing her hearing in her teens.

“I could localize where sound was coming from but if I was in a pretty dynamic situation like a social gathering or a restaurant and I was trying to carry on a conversation, I struggled. I missed out on a lot,” she said.

Once Cameron got a hearing aid seven years ago, she said her life changed.

“I was getting the details. The puzzle pieces were getting filled in. I was understanding the flow of conversation. It totally changed my confidence level,” she said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I was getting the details. The puzzle pieces were getting filled in. I was understanding the flow of conversation. It totally changed my confidence level," she said.

Cameron said she understands hearing loss can’t just be fixed by a hearing aid and is enthusiastic about local research happening in the field.

Muise-Hennessey said the findings could help improve the quality of life for people with hearing loss by potentially improving how they understand speech. She plans to use the research to create video games that can improve and further develop cognitive abilities.

“You can’t improve their hearing but you can improve the accuracy and how well they actually perceive speech,” she said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "You can't improve their hearing but you can improve the accuracy and how well they actually perceive speech," she said.

The study is still recruiting for participants and researchers hope to finish collecting data by the end of the summer.