Break a sweat, hear more? Early results point to a surprising link between fitness and speech perception
It's easy to take hearing for granted.
A new study suggests that regular aerobic exercise may improve the ability to understand speech in noisy environments. As people age, they often experience hearing loss, making it difficult to pick out individual voices amidst background noise. However, exercise could help address this issue by enhancing executive function, a brain area responsible for managing information, self-regulation, decision-making, and task-switching.
Researchers at Northeastern University's Bouvé College of Health Sciences are investigating whether exercise can enhance speech perception. In the first phase of the study, participants run on a treadmill while wearing oxygen-consumption monitoring masks. Their cardiorespiratory fitness, measured by VO2 max, is then recorded. Simultaneously, participants complete speech-in-noise tasks, repeating recorded sentences played against varying background noise levels.
Preliminary results indicate that individuals with higher fitness levels perform about 15% better in speech-in-noise tasks compared to less fit participants.
While the study has shown promising early results, further research is needed to establish a definitive link between fitness and speech perception. Researchers plan to expand the study into a six-month intervention, testing the impact of regular workouts on speech perception performance. If confirmed, this finding could provide a practical solution for individuals experiencing communication difficulties due to age-related hearing loss.
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