On Monday, October 26 at 5 PM EDT, Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) will host its first Hearing Health Hour event on Zoom. Presented quarterly, Hearing Health Hour is a lay-friendly webinar series about managing hearing loss and related conditions and research updates presented by Emerging Research Grants (ERG) recipients. Capacity for this webinar is limited and advance registration is required.

The inaugural session is entitled “Age-Related Hearing Loss: Problems and Solutions” and will be presented by 2014 ERG scientist Samira Anderson, Au.D., Ph.D. You may recall Anderson’s inclusion in a 2019 Wall Street Journal article, “Better Hearing Can Lead to Better Thinking,” wherein she remarked, “When you ask people, ‘What do you fear most about aging?’ they all say loss of cognitive function and loneliness. No one ever says ‘hearing loss,’ even though those things are all connected.” 

Untreated age-related hearing loss leads to many changes throughout the brain and can affect speech understanding and cognitive ability. The presentation will review how hearing loss changes the way our brains respond to speech and how it may affect cognitive functions, such as working memory. The extent to which hearing aid amplification can reverse these changes will also be discussed. Attendees will be able to participate in a Q&A with Anderson at the end of the session. 

If you are unable to attend the live event, the captioned presentation will be recorded and published for your review at hhf.org/webinar. You can also submit questions to Anderson no later than Friday, October 23 via marketing@hhf.org. 

Samira Anderson, Ph.D., whose ERG project was funded by the Grand Chapter Royal Arch Masons International, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at the University of Maryland. To learn more about the series, see hhf.org/webinar. To receive updates about future webinars, sign up below.