Older adults with the most difficulty understanding spoken words had less brain tissue in a region important for speech recognition, U.S. researchers found.
The findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, may help explain why hearing aids do not benefit all people with age-related hearing difficulties.
Study leader Kelly Harris of the Medical University of South Carolina said that some hearing loss can be a normal part of aging, but many older adults complain about difficulty understanding speech, especially in challenging listening conditions like crowded restaurants.
The researchers scanned the brains of 18 younger adults — 19-39 years old — and 18 older adults — 61-79 years old — as they tried to identify words in listening conditions that varied in difficulty. During a challenging listening condition, the older adults repeated fewer words correctly than did the younger adults, consistent with previous studies.
The older adults who had the most difficulty recognizing words also had the least brain volume in a region of auditory cortex called Herschel’s gyrus/superior temporal gyrus, Harris said.
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