Louise MacGillivrary has undergone her fair share of hearing tests.

“I was in my fifties when I started noticing I was losing my hearing and I’ve been wearing bilateral hearing aids for 11 years now,” she tells CTV News.

Now, she is undergoing tests as part of a study taking place at the NeuroCognitive Imagine Lab at Dalhousie University.

“We’re conducting this clinical trial as a way of trying to investigate whether or not cognitive training can improve people’s hearing abilities and especially their speech perception abilities,” says lab director Dr. Aaron Newman.

Dr. Newman says understanding speech is a common problem for older adults who wear hearing aids.

“They get a hearing aid and they can hear sound better, but they still struggle to understand speech in conversations and more natural settings,” says Dr. Newman. “Especially if there’s any background noise.”

Dr. Newman says since hearing aid technology is very advanced, the problem seems to be cognitive.

These cognitive challenges can be frustrating.

“I understand why people who have hearing loss tend to withdraw. When you don’t hear all the conversation sometimes you’re not sure how you should answer,” says MacGillivrary.

In an effort to ease the frustration and improve hearing, the lab has partnered with Lumosity. The brain training software engages cognitive skills such as memory, attention and processing speed.

“They’re playing Lumosity for 20 minutes a day, three, four days a week and after a few weeks of doing that training, we bring them back to the lab and reassess them and see if their hearing has improved at that point,” explains Dr. Newman.

The participants are going through different types of cognitive training to assess which are most effective.

“So maybe training your short term memory is better because you need to sort of maintain in your mind as you’re listening to a sentence all the things that have come before and integrate that,” Dr. Newman says. “So that might be more beneficial than some other kinds of cognitive training and that’s what we hope to find out.”

Dr. Newman says it’s too early to say whether they are seeing positive results, but he hopes to have more answers as the study goes on.

The study is open to adults age 50 and older who use hearing aids. To find out more about how you can take part click here.