{"id":672262,"date":"2026-09-04T13:01:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672262\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T13:01:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T13:01:24","slug":"can-exercise-improve-your-hearing-in-noisy-rooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/672262\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Exercise Improve Your Hearing in Noisy Rooms?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easy to take hearing for granted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A podcast playing in the background. Your kids making animal noises and debating who gets to be the cheetah. An orange Maine Coon cat purring in your lap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what if the sounds start slipping away?<\/p>\n

\u201cBy age 80, something like 80 percent of adults will have hearing loss,\u201d said Northeastern Bouv\u00e9 College of Health Sciences professor Jonathan Peelle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that what hearing aids are for?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that simple.<\/p>\n

Say you\u2019re in a crowded restaurant. Voices, clattering dishes and the live band in the corner might blur into one sea of sound. This makes it hard to pick out what you actually want to hear \u2014 words being addressed to you.<\/p>\n

If understanding speech in a noisy environment were just about making it louder, hearing aids would do the trick, said Bridget Carey<\/a>, a Ph.D. student in Peelle\u2019s lab.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But hearing loss doesn\u2019t just boil down to volume. The challenge is also untangling speech signals from the rest of the auditory vinaigrette for the brain to process. You also have to remember who said what and hold up your end of the conversation.<\/p>\n

\"Computer09\/02\/26 \u2013 BOSTON, MA. \u2013 Bridget Carey, a Northeastern PhD student at the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, runs VO2max tests with Hailey Smith, a PhD student at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, as Smith runs on the treadmill in ISEC on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

\"Carey09\/02\/26 \u2013 BOSTON, MA. \u2013 Bridget Carey, a Northeastern PhD student at the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, runs VO2max tests with Hailey Smith, a PhD student at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, as Smith runs on the treadmill in ISEC on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

\"A09\/02\/26 \u2013 BOSTON, MA. \u2013 Bridget Carey, a Northeastern PhD student at the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, runs VO2max tests with Hailey Smith, a PhD student at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, as Smith runs on the treadmill in ISEC on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University
\nNortheastern researcher Bridget Carey is investigating the link between fitness and speech perception. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

Scientists study these mental maneuvers through speech-in-noise tasks, which rate how well someone can pick out voices from other sounds.<\/p>\n

Peelle\u2019s previous research showed that analyzing speech under difficult conditions engages the prefrontal cortex. This brain region handles executive functions \u2014 higher-order mental skills that allow the brain to manage information, self-regulate, make decisions and switch between tasks.<\/p>\n

This area is particularly vulnerable to age-related damage. As a result, the ability to parse speech from competing sounds can take a hit with time. But since it\u2019s a neurological problem, there\u2019s no hearing aid that will make it better.<\/p>\n

That said, there\u2019s a promising solution in the works.<\/p>\n

Research has shown that aerobic exercise<\/a> supports many systems in the body \u2014 and hearing is no exception. Exercise is also linked to brain health, the other part of the puzzle.<\/p>\n

An ongoing study in Peelle\u2019s lab is asking if the secret to navigating tricky listening environments might be as simple as regularly logging a few laps around the track.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If speech-in-noise tasks rely on executive function \u2014 and we know that physical activity helps it \u2014 then couldn\u2019t exercise also benefit speech perception, Peelle and Carey pondered. They set out to find out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now in its first phase, their study is trying to establish a link between these concepts.<\/p>\n

Volunteers run on a treadmill while wearing masks tracking how much oxygen they consume during exercise. The method determines their VO2 max, a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness. They also complete a test asking them to repeat recorded sentences played against various levels of background noise.<\/p>\n

So far, participants with higher fitness levels are performing about 15 percent better on speech-in-noise tasks than their less athletic counterparts, Peelle said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not sound like a ton, but that\u2019s one or two words per sentence more that you\u2019re able to get, which means you can get more context,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\"PortraitNortheastern professor Jonathan Peelle studies how the brain processes speech and taps into the connection between exercise and brain health to preserve that ability over time. Photo by Matthew Modoono\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

The early results line up with what scientists already know about exercise, brain health and the effects of fitness on executive function.<\/p>\n

Brian Sandroff, assistant director of the Center for Neuropsychology and Neuroscience<\/a> Research, a division of the Kessler Foundation for research into disabilities, talked to Northeastern Global News about the link between fitness and cognition. He said that working memory and attention \u2014 processes involved in speech-in-noise tasks \u2014 benefit from \u201ceven a single bout of aerobic exercise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the next phase of Peelle and Carey\u2019s study, subjects will spend 20 minutes exercising vigorously on a treadmill. They will then have their speech perception performance tested for signs of improvement. This single session will serve as a prototype for a six-month intervention that will involve regular workouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal would be to turn this into basically a clinical trial \u2026 where we can improve people\u2019s functional communication,\u201d Peelle explained.<\/p>\n

Northeastern professor Charles Hillman<\/a> studies exercise and brain health. He has demonstrated that exercise improves how the brain<\/a> works across the lifespan and has particular benefits for executive function<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Smith09\/02\/26 \u2013 BOSTON, MA. \u2013 Bridget Carey, a Northeastern PhD student at the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, runs VO2max tests with Hailey Smith, a PhD student at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, as Smith runs on the treadmill in ISEC on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

\"Close-up09\/02\/26 \u2013 BOSTON, MA. \u2013 Bridget Carey, a Northeastern PhD student at the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health, runs VO2max tests with Hailey Smith, a PhD student at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, as Smith runs on the treadmill in ISEC on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University
\nNortheastern researcher Bridget Carey measures a fellow Ph.D. student\u2019s VO2 max as she runs on the treadmill. Photo by Alyssa Stone\/Northeastern University<\/p>\n

But Kirk Erickson, an investigator from the hospital network AdventHealth<\/a>, raised an important point. The preliminary findings sounded plausible, he said. However, the correlation between greater fitness and better speech perception doesn\u2019t mean that one actually caused the other through a neurological mechanism, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even the intervention phases won\u2019t reveal exactly what\u2019s happening in the brain.<\/p>\n

Perhaps \u201cfitness helps people allocate cognitive resources more efficiently when listening becomes challenging,\u201d he said. If so, demonstrating this could serve as a \u201cuseful bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Peelle and Carey plan to look for that very bridge with the help of brain imaging technology known as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). It uses light to track changes in blood flow associated with brain activity.<\/p>\n

With sensors attached to a cap, it\u2019s a portable cousin of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses magnets to measure neural activation patterns. But while an fMRI scanner requires a person to lie inside a giant magnet, an fNIRS cap can be taken on the road for experiments in more natural settings.<\/p>\n

You can wear it in a noisy coffee shop and measure brain activity as you try to follow a conversation, Peelle said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For now, though, the prescription is simple: get moving. Anything that gets your heart rate up is fair game, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

Carey, for one, is living what she preaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u2019s currently training for her fourth marathon, with a fifth on the horizon in the spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tNortheastern Global News, in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Sign up for NGN\u2019s daily newsletter for news, discovery and analysis from around the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Katya Poltorak is a science reporter at Northeastern Global News. Email her at e.poltorak@northeastern.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s easy to take hearing for granted.\u00a0 A podcast playing in the background. Your kids making animal noises…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[278],"tags":[18,539,525,135,41666,19,17],"class_list":["post-672262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-eire","tag-exercise","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-hearing-loss","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117212905075016819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}