TRYING to follow conversation in a crowded restaurant or other noisy venue is a struggle, even for people without hearing difficulties.
But all that could change thanks to a new brain-training audio game designed by researchers in the US.
The game was tested on 24 people with an average age of 70. All had mild to severe hearing loss and had worn hearing aids for an average of seven years.
After playing the game, participants correctly made out 25 per cent more words where high levels of background noise were present.
Researchers say the training provided about three times more benefit than hearing aids alone.
"These findings underscore that understanding speech in noisy listening conditions is a whole brain activity, and is not strictly governed by the ear," said Daniel Polley of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School.
"The improvements in speech intelligibility following closed loop audiomotor perceptual training did not arise from an improved signal being transferred from the ear to the brain.
"Our subjects' hearing, strictly speaking, did not get better."
Yet their ability to make sense of what they had heard did.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two training groups, and all were asked to spend 3.5 hours a week for eight weeks playing a game.
One group played a game designed with the intention of improving players' ability to follow conversations. It challenged them to monitor subtle deviations between predicted and actual auditory feedback as they moved their fingertip through a virtual soundscape.
As a "placebo" control, the other group played a game that challenged players' auditory working memory and wasn't expected to help with speech intelligibility.
People in both groups improved their respective auditory tasks and had comparable expectations for improved speech processing.
Despite those expectations, participants who played the working memory game showed no improvement in their ability to make out words or even improvements on other working memory tasks.
The other group showed marked improvements, correctly identifying 25 per cent more words in spoken sentences or digit sequences presented in high levels of background noise. Those gains could also be predicted based on the accuracy with which individuals played the game.
While the benefits did not persist without continuing practice, the researchers say the findings show that "perceptual learning on a computerised audiogame can transfer to 'real world' communication challenges".
They envision a time when hearing challenges might be managed through a combination of auditory training software coupled with the latest in-ear listening devices.
The research was published in Current Biology.
