Hearing is not always about what sound our ears can detect. What tends to be the bigger issue is our ability to understand speech, especially in background noise. This is often called auditory processing and is something that hearing aids cannot easily help with. Understanding speech in a noisy environment relies on quick neural pathways in our brain. We know these pathways slowly deteriorate with age, making it harder to separate out speech from the background noise.
As our quick neural pathways slow down we may:
- Start to have more difficulty understanding speech in noise, or when more than one person is speaking.
- Frequently say “what” “eh” when you haven’t heard clearly.
- Misunderstand what is being said.
- Need a longer response time during conversation.
