As one of Northeastern’s newest faculty members, cognitive neuroscientist Jonathan Peelle is still setting up his lab. But he is already unpacking the advice.
Protect your hearing, Peelle says. Once damaged, its function cannot be fully restored, and this has important implications for speech understanding.
“You don’t have to have profound hearing loss to have cognitive challenges,” says Peelle, whose research on the neuroscience of communication, aging and hearing is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Even mild hearing loss makes the brain work harder to understand speech, especially when background noise is involved, he says.
It uses functional brain imaging to measure small changes in blood flow in the brain of subjects with mild hearing loss and individuals with cochlear implants.
Peelle, an associate professor at the Northeastern Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, also uses a laboratory technique called pupillometry, which measures small fluctuations in the diameter of the pupil.
Pupil diameter becomes larger when people hear challenging speech, Peelle says. Add background noise and “your brain may have to work harder.”
“If I can help your hearing, I’ll help your cognition,” at least in the short term, Peelle says.
Large population studies, such as a 2020 report published in the medical journal Lancetshow that dementia is more likely in those with hearing loss.
But the risk to individuals has not been calculated, Peelle says.
“No one has drawn that link yet,” he says.
Peelle, who comes to Northeastern from Washington University in St. Louis.
He says that in the future it would be interesting to measure the extent to which hearing aids reduce the cognitive challenge, with a view to improving the devices.
“There have been really very few studies showing how much cognitive benefit people have developed from hearing aids,” says Peelle.
Peelle’s interest in helping people understand brain function has extended to hosting two podcasts. He started The Brain Made Plain while at the University of Washington to provide students with exposure to neuroscientists.
“I wanted them to get to know some other scientists as people,” Peelle says.
“We try to explain the terms and not be too scientific about things,” he adds.
Peelle also co-hosts The Juice and the Squeeze with Carleton College professor Julia Strand. They share information on careers in science, how to apply for a grant, give a science talk, and apply time management skills.
The podcasts have been more sporadic than consistent lately, Peelle says, with life changes including a new job at Northeastern and raising his young children — a 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old twins.
The adjustment to New England has been relatively smooth since his wife’s family is from Boston and Peelle received his master’s degree and doctorate from Brandeis University.
“Boston is kind of like a second home for us. We’re excited to be here,” Peelle says.
Peelle also has a Twitter presence noted for lighthearted humor and sharing the work of other scientists.
He has been on the social media platform since its inception nearly 17 years ago.
“I actually found out about the job at Northeastern because one of the other faculty members tweeted about it,” Peelle says.
As a graduate student, he says, his initial interest was in speech and how it was affected by age-related changes in language recognition and processing.
After a few years, his attention turned to hearing.
“We’re looking at language processing, but it has to come through the ears,” Peelle says. “It’s a holistic view of how we communicate throughout life.”
“A lot of what I preach is hearing protection,” he says. He urges people to wear earplugs during rock concerts, for example, and to take breaks so they don’t listen for three full hours.
“Hearing damage,” Peelle says, “is a combination of how loud things are and how loud you hear them.”
He says he has spent the past 10 years studying why understanding speech is difficult for some people.
“I want to spend the next 10 years making it less difficult.”
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