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The behavioural and neural effect of hearing aids during speech emotion perception in older adults using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Carmen Dang¹ (), Gurjit Singh^1,2,3, Brandon T. Paul¹, Frank A. Russo^1,2; ¹Toronto Metropolitan University, ²University of Toronto, ³Sonova Canada

Hearing aid research has improved speech intelligibility for individuals with hearing loss; however, recent research reveals that hearing aids do not improve perception of emotion in speech in adults. Hearing loss has been associated with changes in neural activations when listening to emotional non-speech sounds, potentially contributing to the speech emotion perception deficits, even under aided listening. Prior neuroimaging studies required participants to remove their aids due to metal incompatibility with fMRI, limiting research on neural mechanisms underlying speech emotion perception in hearing aid users. Like fMRI, fNIRS non-invasively measures brain activity through changes in blood flow, but fNIRS is silent and compatible with hearing aids, making it a promising tool for auditory cognitive neuroscience. We leveraged fNIRS to examine how hearing aids affect brain function in experienced hearing aid users during speech emotion perception. Thirty-two older adults (17 normal hearing, 15 hearing aid users) judged emotional speech while fNIRS recorded hemodynamic activity in prefrontal, auditory and parietal cortices. Hearing aid users completed the task twice, once aided and once unaided. Behavioral results replicate prior research that hearing aids do not improve speech emotion perception. Neural data show greater engagement of sensorimotor regions in individuals with hearing loss, regardless of hearing aid use. Under unaided listening, there was additional recruitment of the superior medial frontal area, whereas aided listening showed reduced task-based connectivity between sensorimotor nodes. Results suggest that while hearing loss increases localized activity in sensorimotor areas, hearing aids reduce the connectivity between these areas during speech emotion perception.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Development & aging