Projects from The Neuroscience of Speech and Action (NoSA) Laboratory, Lancaster University

Despite atrocious weather, a large crowd of members gathered in Moor Space to hear Dr Jess Pepper present her current research project ‘Hearing Loss & Brain Health’ and introduce three PhD students whose projects also focus on various aspects of brain activity in older age.

Jess told us that by the age of seventy years around 80% of people have some hearing loss. She then gave a concise outline of some of the ways in which hearing loss can affect cognitive functioning - the brain has to work much harder as people need to concentrate more; subsequent physical change occurring in the brain requires reorganisation of the brain itself; this drains the brain’s resources from functioning in other tasks, which in turn may affect such as balance and risk of falls. Additional issues such as social isolation, leading to possible anxiety in older people, all make the use of hearing aids a vital factor in improving cognitive functioning, and it is the potential for boosting the brain’s resources to make necessary adaptation to the use of hearing aids faster and more effective by using magnetic brain stimulation that is the basis of the current research.

Further presentations of research projects covered Contact Sports, the subject of much interest lately in the possible role of repeated brain impact over time as a factor in dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy; the impact of Cardiovascular Disease on the brain and subsequent limitations on the efficacy of hearing aids; and finally, the impact of Chemotherapy in cancer treatment on the hair cells in the cochlea and subsequent hearing loss.

The topics created much interest from members, with the researchers ably fielding many questions from the appreciative audience. All the projects welcome direct participation from volunteers, with further information available from: j.l.pepper@lancaster.ac.uk and from our News Link sub-page University Research Opportunities