Photo credit: fauxels
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
A report from Spectrum News 1 in Rochester, New York discusses how researchers at the University of Rochester* are studying how the brain cuts through noise to understand conversation. Edmund Lalor, an associate professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering, will study how humans process noise to find one conversation among many and understand what is being said. He is looking for subjects with cochlear implants. The research method involves fitting the subjects with EEG caps to study their brain waves, presumably when being spoken to.
Lalor said that during COVID, when people were wearing masks, many found it difficult to understand what was being said without the visual input of lipreading. He went on to say that “we take it for granted right [sic] I can see what you’re saying. You can understand it, but actually in the brain, we don’t really know how that works, because the visual system is at the back of the brain and the auditory system is off to the side. So how those signals actually come together in your brain to help you understand things is something we really don’t understand.” The hope is that his research will lead to better hearing aids and other devices for people who are hard of hearing or deaf.
My wife and I learned about the importance of lipreading for the hard of hearing when her elderly father, who is profoundly hearing impaired after spending his entire career as an aerospace engineer who sometimes tested jet and rocket engines without hearing protection, couldn’t understand what we were saying when we were wearing masks. We had no idea that he was so dependent on lipreading.
We hope Lalor’s research sheds insight into how people understand conversation.
*Disclosure: I received my medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.
