#74. From the Cochlea to Comedy - Dr. Kate Slade

Dr. Kate Slade, Lecturer and Researcher at Lancaster University, discusses her research on the intersection of hearing loss, aging, and cognition. She explores how hearing loss affects mental health and wellbeing, particularly in older adults, and the implications of health inequalities on hearing outcomes. The conversation also delves into the impact of COVID-19 on hearing and cognition, as well as common misconceptions about hearing loss and its relationship to cognitive decline. We delve into various themes surrounding hearing health, research methodologies, and the intersection of science and comedy. Dr. Slade explores the potential of dream experiments with unlimited funding, and the vision of a research city. The discussion also highlights the importance of non-significant results in research, the value of longitudinal studies, and the joy of communicating science through comedy, emphasizing the need for accessible and engaging science communication.

Chapters

• 0:00 Kate Slade's Origin Story
• 6:58 Neuroscience and Age-Related Hearing Loss
• 17:46 Cognitive Function and Communication Disruption
• 24:52 Hearing Loss and Cognitive Decline
• 31:16 Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and Hearing
• 35:20 Socioeconomic Factors and Hearing Outcomes
• 41:40 Innovative Research Ideas and Future Directions
• 49:00 Research Insights and Future Directions
• 53:52 The Value of Non-Significant Results in Research
• 57:22 The Intersection of Science and Comedy

Transcript

0:03

Hello, hello, hello. And today on the Smooth Brain Society, we're joined by Dr. Kate Slade from Lancaster University. She is a lecturer in research and psychology, and her research explores how hearing loss, aging and cognition intertwine. She's looking at how listening efforts show up, but not just in the brain, but in the body as well, and how these changes connect to wellbeing, mental health. and even health inequalities. But Kate doesn't stop at the lab. She's also a podcast host for Doctors Confess and a science comedian who's taken her research to the stage at the Bright Club and beyond. From hearing loss to punchlines, we have got a lot to explore today. So welcome, Kate. Yeah love with you Beth. uh You are cool, off. you're talking, and you're also talking from your podcast studio. So like you're a professional podcaster. Definitely your personal podcast studio. is my studio. No, thank you so much for having me. I've been hearing a lot about this podcast and obviously I'm a big fan of you both. So I'm very happy to be here in my podcasting studio. and we're very happy to have you in our podcast studios. For those listening online, I'm doing the little bunny ear things. Yeah, we know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. you book in your university and my living room where I hang my T-shirt on the door. Yeah. I have commandeered my supervisor's office. That is quite serious, that's a big deal. big deal. I'm going say I'm a BNOC around here. For those that maybe are under the age of 25, that means big name on campus. don't know if that's still going. that's really sad because yeah, am a big BNOC. Anyway, we'll get to the research. So Kate, when people ask you what you research, what you study, how do you... How do you explain that in kind of simple terms? Yeah, I mean, I probably say similar to how you described me in the introduction that I researched the hearing loss that happens as we age. And then I sometimes try and describe it. So like, know, when you play high frequency sounds and younger people can hear them and older people can't hear them, or when you're in like a noisy environment and as you're aging, it's harder and harder to deal with those kinds of environments. And that's the kind of hearing loss that I study. I'm interested in how it affects our brains and how we process our environments. And I'm interested in how it affects our bodies and how we cope with something I call listening efforts. So the increasing demand of listening environments that are difficult to listen in. So yeah. Yeah, very good little explanation there. So as you've just said there, you kind of work at the intersection between hearing, brain, ageing and mental wellbeing. eh How did you kind of come up with those kind of all kind of being combined together? Because it kind of makes sense when you say it like that, but kind of putting this all together, you know, it's lots of different kind of factors. do you my origin story? Go on. please. That is exactly what I was asking for. So, we've got as much time as you need. I'm here for your entire origin story. If we need to sit here for 10 hours, not a problem. not that exciting, so we'll take it long. So I've always loved psychology. I've been always really interested in how people think and behave. And I've always been interested in how the brain works. And I mean, I don't know if any of you did A-level psychology or anything like that. Did either of you? And. Some of the research that I would like, I'm completely fascinated with like the taxi drivers, hippocampus study. My 16, 17 year old brain was just like, this is unbelievable. And I've always loved the topic. So study at university, like the truth, my truth is that I was never, em I never thought I would like go into research or. be a lecturer or work at a university. I thought maybe I would go into teaching. I've always liked teaching. But I discovered a love for research in my third year when I was doing my dissertation. And it was really all thanks to people around me who told me that like, I could do it and you you could go on and do research. And so this is a long way of me saying like, I never thought that I'd be in this space, but now here I am. And in a way, things have just like, come together through maybe like look, em I don't if I should say that. Yeah, look, and maybe also a bit of like work as well. My hard work. you personally are not hard work you have worked hard. I just just say clear that up. uh decided to try for a PhD and I applied. m I'd been doing some research in like, m in my third year about how m children learn to like read and write. And I was kind of interested in that. And I was interested in aphasia and I had like sort of like a languagey kind of interest going on. And I saw this PhD project about listening efforts. m which is the effort that we use when we're listening in noisy situations, typically experienced by people who are older. So just tell me to stop talking if you want me to stop talking. Okay, thanks. So it's like one of the biggest complaints. m for people with what we call age-related hearing loss, so the hearing loss that happens when we get older, that's to communicate in noisy environments, which are typically the social ones, so where you wanna meet friends and hang out and have social, cognitively stimulating experiences, they're the environments that are the most challenging for older adults, and for a of us anyway, but when you have a hearing loss on top of that, it makes those environments even more difficult. So what I was trying to do in my PhD was objectively quantify the experience of listening effort using physiological measures. So like when you invest physical effort in running, for example, which I personally don't do, but I've heard people, I've heard people run and it's hard. So you have a... your autonomic nervous system activates and things change, your heart rate increases, all that kind of stuff. The same thing can happen when you invest mental efforts, and that's how we see listening efforts, like a mental effort investment of cognitive resources. And we might be able to quantify that using physiological measures, so measures from the heart, so cardiac activity, to see how much effort somebody is investing in a listening environment. em And if we could do that, we could incorporate that into how like hearing is even measured and tested. You could bring it into hearing aids to adjust people's algorithms to like account for their listening efforts in the real world. m And that's what I was doing. So we used... some measures of cardiac activity and we could see that it responds to how much effort people are putting in in different listening situations based on the difficulty of the situation, but also based on how much people want to listen. So like the motivation you have to listen to somebody. So for example, some people might be listening to this thinking, I do not have motivation to listen to Kate going on about this. I'm gonna tune out. Other people will think I'm the most interesting person ever and have lots of motivation and their nervous system is going to be activated in response to trying to perceive what I'm saying. em So that's what I was doing there. And that really made me think more holistically as well about the experience of hearing loss and difficulties with listening. Because em in my like introductions, I would always write like... it's really about the social aspect, this communication, and that's a really holistic experience. And it intersects with a lot of other m factors that make us human and also let us live like really healthy lives to be able to communicate, to participate in things. It's really important. And I don't know what the question was, Beth. I answered it. Are you, yeah, no, like m you gave your origin story about how you got here. like then you went, but then, and did your PhD then just carry on into kind of doing the same? So yeah, so after I finished my PhD and I'd done, I basically done neck down. So I've been looking at physiological measures, neck down. I hadn't really gone neck up. I mean, the ears are neck up, but I hadn't looked at the brain and I was really interested in doing that. because I'd been reading about like neuroscientific measures of cognitive effort and attention and all this kind of stuff. And I've been reading about how hearing loss might affect the brain. And I was super interested in that. And I saw a postdoc. Should I say thank you to people or am I just being weird now? Thank you everyone who's helped me. That's not weird at all. You thank them away. Thank you to my PhD supervisor, you were the best. Shout out Dr. Michael Richter. Oh, he might. Oh, he's yeah. Yeah. He You ever talk about he's lovely. Yeah. is honestly one of my favorite people ever. I could not have done anything without him. He made me believe in myself as a scientist. And if anybody wants to do a PhD, I recommend him so highly. What a guy. I hope he doesn't listen to this. I'm embarrassed. Don't email it. clipped this out, send it straight to him. Yeah, no, but that's all 100 % true. It was the best experience. I know that's not always the case for researchers, but I had the best PhD experience, hands down. I loved it so much and I learned so, so much. couldn't, yeah, it was great. So yeah, thanks. And then I applied for this postdoc at Lancaster that I saw that was all, it was like all about the neurobiology of age-related hearing loss. And I was like, oh my God, I want this so badly. just, I was desperate, like desperate to get this position. m And the principal investigator was Dr. Helen Nuttall, who is... I think I've just had the best experiences in my life because she is also an unbelievable person. I'm just like, this is what I mean about the luck of the people I've managed to work with. I think we just need to say like you're a lovely person, you're lovely people and I just think you know when lovely people meet each other they're like lovely smart people meet each other like this is just gonna work, this is gonna work beautifully. they give me so much energy and like, yeah, I couldn't have asked for any better experiences. And she is an amazing, like scientist, amazing person, amazing mentor. Yeah. Amazing podcast co-host. We co-host the podcast together. She's now like one of my best friends. Well, what's that saying? Like you're definitely my best friend. What was that? I was like, I'm, I'm, you're my, I'm not your best friend, you're my best friend. Yeah, she's my best friend. So yeah, the project was all about understanding the neurobiology of age-related hearing loss. using neuroscientific methods m like electroentephyllography, so that's EEG when we put little sensors on the scalp and we measure the electrical activity in the brain from the neurons, which is how the brain communicates. You've probably done all this already that your listeners know this kind of information. because we've got people from all, people who've know nothing about science, there might be some PIs, there people who've just not done EEG before, so please, we like these explanations. So yeah, they're little sensors, a little stick on the head or attach the head through a very attractive swimming cap and they measure the activity in the brain. And the post also advertised that it would involve transcranial magnetic stimulation, TMS. m which is a technique that you can use to stimulate the brain. And it works through electromagnetic induction. you put like a paddle kind of looking thing em on someone's head. It kind of looks like a, you could use it for like table tennis maybe. slightly smaller but yeah. Yeah, table tennis kind of racket. Brand you own with. Yeah, something like that. And you put that on to the head. And it's a button and it delivers a magnetic pulse, which creates a magnetic field. then through like, physics process. m that creates an electric current in the brain that can actually activate the brain's neurons. m And I had heard about the technique, but obviously I'd never done anything with it. And I remember the first time I went into Helen's lab and she showed me how it worked and that you could stimulate the motor cortex and then see somebody's arm move because of the stimulation you delivered. and it had activated the neurons. was like, this is, this is sci-fi. This is amazing. can't, uh I've hit the lottery with this project. was so fascinated by it. And what's really cool is that it means you can sort of do like cause and effect research so you can, m know, what's the word, excite. brain areas or sort of disrupt them and measure the effects of that on behaviour or on other neuroscientific outcomes like EEG, so the activity in the brain. So it used loads of all of these different methods to try and understand about how the brain might change after you have age-related hearing loss. So we know that hearing loss affects the ear, but obviously that means that less information goes to your brain and that might have consequences, whether that's because your brain kind of reorganizes itself or maybe there's like disuse of certain areas or upregulation of areas to try and cope with the demands of the new situation that you've got from the reduced like sensory input, if that makes sense. Yeah. So yeah, it was all about that. And then COVID happened. things didn't pan out quite as they had expected. which meant I explored some different kind of research questions. For example, about how being isolated during the COVID pandemic might affect your hearing and your cognitive function in older and younger adults. And again, I think all of these experiences kind of added to my thoughts around this area as being like very holistic, its brain, its body, its mental health, its wellbeing, its loneliness, its isolation and the ability to hear sex with everything. em So I think that all these experiences really, really added to my, to how much I love the topic. m And we did some work around like health inequalities, which is something I'm like getting, I'm really interested in. It's not like my... area of expertise per se, but I'm really fascinated by it it's really important. There's like a massive effect of, well I say massive effect, but that's like a scientific term, so ignore that. There's an effect of health inequality and inequalities on hearing outcomes. There's even like a North-South divide, I believe, where people in the North of the UK are more likely to experience hearing loss than those in the South. So yeah, that's the thing. So yeah. Yeah. incredible. all makes sense. I think the biggest thing is what you're basically saying is that there's not just one thing that is a driving cause of hearing loss or dementia. There's lots of these things kind of intersect with each other. So, oh one thing when there's so many things affecting hearing loss. Yeah, and this is why like collaborative research and like, I love like talking to people from different disciplines or different areas and it makes you learn something that you're so, you can get so bogged down in the details like when you're doing your PhD or even when you're doing a postdoc, which is kind of like PhD extended, I guess, that you get so focused on like really detailed specifics and you can lose sight of like the real, the bigger kind of things, I guess. Yeah, no massively. Yeah. oh You also speak about so many different aspects, which you've been a part of, right? Like you said, neck down, neck up, and then the sort of holistic eh experiences as well. But uh so I want to start with the more like the COVID-19 and hearing loss one. I think that's more public health related. I did not think that that was even a thing that you could potentially have sort of hearing loss effects with regards to like isolation and COVID. I mean COVID-19, like due to isolation and things, could you unpack that a little bit more first? And then maybe we can talk about like what happens inside next. Yeah, I can definitely try and probably, I mean, you two probably have a lot more insights actually into like, well, maybe you do, like the effects of like deprivation on like development and that kind of thing. em I get what she might be able to say some things that I don't know about, but yeah, the idea of the project was really to understand if changes to like communication would affect cognitive outcomes. So when I mean that, mean like, memory and thinking tests that we run at the typically in psychology or in other disciplines to assess parts of cognitive function. And so that's like, you know, memory, and being able to hold information in your brain and manipulate it, and decision making, all that kind of stuff. Also, whether that isolation might affect hearing outcomes. So if there are changes in how we're hearing information, so whether that's because, I mean, for example, I put my hand over my mouth, you have less sensory information and maybe you find it harder to distinguish some of the words that I'm saying. That's probably ruined the mic thing. But when I remove my hand, you use the visuals from lip reading to sort of put the information together. Obviously in COVID we all wore face masks, which muffled the sound, made it hard to see people's mouths. And as well as that, we moved to like more online communication. We were in our houses. weren't, it was just completely an unprecedented situation for that kind of thing. And there's some evidence that when you sort of disrupt the processing, so like maybe you occlude hearing, it can affect how it can affect the brain. So you get changes in the brain because of that. m And I was wondering if that would happen during the pandemic when people's communication was completely disrupted. um What did I find in that study? I don't think I found what I expected. I'll have to go back over the abstract. a... always fully remember the output of it that's okay. think that it was quite a positive story m in the end that they didn't have these impacts that I expected it would and I guess that could be due to the methods that I had used. But yeah, maybe, I don't know if you know about, you can shed some light on this deprivation or the effects of deprivation on how the brain processes information. I've got a quick question. What part of the brain is it that we're listening is, yes? No, no, no, no, Sorry I was trying to think of another study Where covid 19 they found some Loss to the temporal area no, Is it because of the fact that yes, we've all been maybe isolated a bit? Is it the fact that also, you know, we lose our smell, like COVID as well? So there was this scare of like, oh my God, COVID is causing our brains to shrink. it's like, it's probably more, as you said, not like long-term deprivation, but you know, that kind of like, know, three to four times we're our smell, you know, we've got an osmium, which is where you can't smell due to COVID. Was it the fact that we just weren't interacting as much, you using our senses as much? That's a bit out there, that comment. So don't take too much away from that. More just like a speculation. I'm sorry. em I think it was eh Dr. Douad. So please, if you're listening to this, please don't get angry at me about that interpretation. Yeah. It's just speculation, is it? So we can say the things that might be happening and we don't know if they are or not because there's not enough evidence yet. Lose it. That's one of the hypotheses, isn't it? Yeah. yep. And is that a big thing about the kind of, you know, the hearing and the deprivation to do with that? But maybe more long term deprivations here might know, might have some other comments on it. I mean, I mean, not because I can't think of a study off the top of my head. I'm not going to say more than that, but, uh, but your, but the, the things that you suggest are basically true, which is what you see, right? I mean, I mean, the basic, the basic simple example, which you can say is if you don't work out, then your muscles sort of like lose their strength, they atrophies the same thing sort of happens with the brain. If it's deprived of, of functioning of those sort of things. And I guess it makes sense if you're not listening as much, you're not experiencing as many sounds, uh sort of that would sort of atrophy a little bit. Very plastic. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, this isn't necessarily a negative story actually. It can be quite positive because the brain copes and reorganizes and new connections form and all that kind of stuff, which is fantastic. Yeah, go on. very quickly I was just gonna say it's like and similar to what you're talking about Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease which I research is like you can have cognitive and motor reserve from you know maybe if you exercise a lot if you you know read a lot if you're social you know even when you get kind of like build up of those plaques which you know m you know TAU plaques which is basically these little proteins that kind of stick onto your brain and what they think is the main driver of Alzheimer's disease. But if you've got kind of, you know, other areas where, you know, you've been being more social as a person, it's exactly resilience, then, you know, you're less likely to get these things. So if you start to lose some of those senses, is it you're reducing that reserve and kind of it's making you more susceptible, I guess, to... it's like the ability to be able to engage in these reserve building activities, I guess, which is, yeah, really important. And we also looked at some like mental health, like predictors like looking at depression and things because there's links between, you know, m experiencing these kinds of changes to our senses as we age and mental health factors because we then have to cope with, you know, all this new stuff that's happening to us and maybe not being able to go out and socialize as easily as we were able to because of the stigma around having hearing loss or asking people to repeat themselves or because these environments are just not built to help people with hearing loss because they're just too noisy and there's not good, like, guess, acoustics. So yeah. uh so many different aspects. Many, many things. em I guess just a quick question I was going to say is like is there a myth or misunderstanding you think people often have about hearing loss and the brain or factors you've chastened about? guess something that's that's that's a current conversation at the moment is that there's a link between hearing loss as we age and cognitive decline and that has been demonstrated in what's the word epidemiological studies and that have looked at like risk factors for dementia, risk factors for cognitive decline. I don't know if you've seen, you probably have like the Lancet article about all the lifestyle modifiable risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline. And that paper suggests that if hearing loss is a risk factor for dementia, and that all hearing loss was eliminated. And I might be saying this incorrectly, I'm not an epidemiologist, so don't quote me exactly on this. Is that 8 % of dementia cases could be reduced or removed, but this is based on like population level data. It's not individual risk. And also we don't know if the link between hearing loss and dementia is causal. There's a hypothesis that it may be, but it also may not be. They may just both exist due to some underlying m factor that we don't know yet. But there is a danger of overstating this link when we don't truly know what it is. And it can be very scary to hear that hearing loss might lead to cognitive decline. And actually, we don't know if that's the case. There's not enough evidence yet to tell us whether that is happening or not. m And I think it's very important for people to know that. So just because you have hearing loss doesn't mean it's going to have any negative impact on neurodegenerative disease, if that makes sense. And I think it's just this care that we need to take about that message. And I've been... m This has really developed my thinking, thanks to some other amazing researchers who are also working in this area about how we communicate these kinds of messages, especially to the public. And as you both know, I like to talk to the public sometimes. So I wanna make sure that I'm not saying things that are incorrect or not evidence-based. And that's one thing that's maybe like, I don't know if it's a misconception, but just like an interesting kind of... em message at the moment. I don't know I'm describing this very well. No, I get it. think it's very important because I guess epidemiological studies are pretty good at showing associations, but the association doesn't necessarily need to mean anything. The very famous correlation is in causation. because what's in dementia or in your degenerative disorders, your brain or like a certain brain region is potentially atrophying and that brain region might be related to hearing and therefore you are seeing hearing loss but it doesn't mean that hearing loss causes it. It could be a symptom but hearing loss is caused from many other things I am assuming as well, not just that. oh, toxicity drugs, they can damage the hair cells in your air lifestyle exposure to noise. uh just as you get older, I guess as well, like that's naturally gonna, yeah. Well, when I say that, I mean, you're more, from the corner you said, you're more, you're going to possibly probably hear from a lifetime more loud sounds, know, you're gonna slowly destroy that kind of, is it the bottom or top of the cochlear that goes first with, Oh, god, on them. Yes. Yeah. area and the cut clear is tonotopically organized so that like, yeah, yeah. little, like a little conch. that's why people, as we get older, we can't hear those higher pitch frequencies first. m hair cells atrophy and once they have atrophied they do not, they don't regenerate in humans. Yeah. I say these things because my, when I was in my undergrad, the, my personal tutor was like a big hearing guy. m His name was Dave Finesse. He was very lovely. He was a great personal tutor. So we had, we had a whole module on hearing and it was great. Yeah. It was very enjoyable. And I guess the question I have like in terms of, m won't name any businesses or name any names because I appreciate that would be slanderous. m But I've seen maybe some adverts where people are taking advantage of the fact that this has kind of come out a little bit without strong evidence being like, really important that you come get some hearing tests booked in for the price of £399.99. Well, you're really right, Beth. that's, yeah, I've seen that too, maybe from suppliers of, of, you know, hearing aids and things like that to say, you know, that there's this link, it's important that you, you get a hearing aid if you have hearing loss. And the evidence that a hearing aid would offset this possible cause is also not, there's not enough evidence to tell us that yet either. And we need more research in the area. But you're right. it is really important that people go get their hearing checked. But the driving message, I guess, shouldn't be that that's to prevent dementia. It's more because hearing is important because it helps you thrive in life. And it might be helpful to get some help with that. So yeah, you're completely right. Yeah, anyway, just like a little bit of a controversial social take in there. when you emailed me about this podcast, you asked me for something that was like, what did you say? can't remember. Oh, sorry. Don't worry. It's a good reminder. We're kind of touching on brain regions and you said you did TMS or you were going to do, I don't know how much TMS you actually got to do before that project got stopped, but I'm kind of interested in knowing what you were planning to do with the TMS in terms of hearing. Because even the example you gave was, ah somebody's motor cortex was hit and they moved their arm, but that's not necessarily hearing. So I kind of want to know what you guys were up to. Yeah, so very good question. So I will say that this is all based on a project that Helen got funded through the BBSRC, which is a research council. yeah, the neurobiology of aging was sorry, age-related hearing loss, m was her. m that she got funded and she was hoping to, we had some various projects in there that we were hoping to look at. So the one thing that we are currently working on, so we've come back to some of this work now, now that we can get back into the lab m and we've just, we've completed some. m we've completed some research on one of these areas, is looking to look at whether TMS can entrain certain oscillations in the brain that may be helpful for the cognitive processes that are involved with like hearing or listening to speech and noise. So when I say like oscillations in the brain, m there are certain patterns of brain activity that occur and these can be banded into different frequency bands. I know you know this. Anyway, they can be banded into different frequency bands. So you have like m alpha oscillations, beta oscillations, and these all are suggested to correspond to different m processes. Alpha oscillations are m supposed to correspond to things like attending. So when you attend to information or when you are inhibiting information, the activity m of these oscillations becomes more or less pronounced. But uh a very exciting thing that you can do with TMS is that you can deliver TMS at a specific frequency to entrain these oscillations. So you can give them like a little bit of a boost. So you could increase, I guess, increase might not be quite the right word, but increase the level of alpha oscillatory activity in the brain and then look at what effect that might have on somebody's performance. on a speech and noise task, for example, that requires, you know, lot of attention and inhibition of noise that you don't want to listen to and attending to the information that you do want to listen to. So that's one thing. And I think what I also mentioned before is that you can excite and disrupt brain areas. So you can see about how, you know, the excitation of one specific brain area might have a benefit or the disruption of a certain brain area might have a... unbenefit? Bad? be bad, be unhelpful. Yeah, we were interested in that and looking at how stimulating maybe the auditory cortex could help people with these kinds of like, you know, listening kind of tasks. So yeah, the work we're doing is still ongoing. And we have, you know, current ideas about where to take that in the future. And Helen's got some really exciting projects going on about how it might change how you... adapt to like hearing aids and things like that. But I think she's going to come on the podcast, right? So I don't want to let her talk about that because yeah, she's doing some really fascinating stuff in that area. So basically it's like to help with hearing aids and how people kind of like almost take to them. And that's so important. Okay, we'll hold off that. Okay, well, I'll ask a little bit more general to get us onto another kind of topic. So in what ways do you think social, economic or psychological factors play into like the hearing and kind of brain? I know you touched on health inequalities a little bit, so maybe we're going to get more of that. Yes, this is like really interesting. So I went to a like a mini conference day and there was a person there called Dr. Dahlia Sinfonada and I think she's currently at nothing. not gonna be wrong. Newcastle? I remember the city's beginning with N. But she presented this. m research that she had been doing. I think it was using data from the biobank, which is like a big online m data set with human data collected uh about various different things, one being hearing and socioeconomic factors. So when we say socioeconomic factors, we mean the factors that relate to our sort of socioeconomic position or status. So m where we live, income, education, m all those types of things intersect with basically health inequality. So yeah, there's evidence that higher m socioeconomic status or like longer in education, greater income, living in more affluent areas, I guess. I might be using the wrong terms here, are all related to better hearing outcomes, whereas lower socioeconomic status is related to poorer hearing outcomes. And that might be for various different reasons that are very complicated. As we know, research that we do with humans often includes or is biased towards a certain type of participant like the the weird population which stands for wealthy, educated, Industrialized? Yeah, I was industrialized. Ah is... really posh. Really fun. Posh, D, dead posh. So yeah, we. R is for rich, not really posh and democratic. So W is Western. Yeah. Well, they saw R is R. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, that's the they're the participants that typically that are overrepresented in research, basically. So we might not have a full understanding actually of how all of these things are interested in affect people who are not that population. m Which is important. So yeah, one of my PhD students that I supervise, is co-supervised with Helen, is doing some really interesting research at the moment into health inequalities and lifestyle factors and socioeconomic status and how they relate to hearing outcomes. So m yeah, it's really important. And actually we don't know the mechanisms so well. There could be various ones. It may just be that, know, these kinds of... create an environment in which certain people are not able to prioritize their hearing health because of complete inequality, um which is very shocking really. I mean, like you said, multiple factors, the area, the affluent area of what's it called? The indices of social deprivation. Isn't that the term? That's the term for it, which is basically like based on what your postcode is, if you have hospitals or schools nearby, a police station nearby, blah, Noise pollution there is, And I mean, that makes sense, right? Probably. If you're in that area you're exposed to louder noises, harsher noises, can't get, you don't have access to amenities to take care of yourself as well. Yeah, you might not have the best access to healthcare. That's not prioritized in that way for some reason. You may be more likely to be exposed to noise through your occupation, all that kind of stuff, yeah. Yeah, good point. Yeah, because it's like, from what you're saying, it's like, there's just so many different factors that kind of cause it. Is there seem to be one leading factor or is it still like, the research still ongoing for your PhD student? Yeah, she'll find it out. Come, get her on. I think, yeah, I think there's been some evidence for various things. So a lot of time people collapse. So like they put a lot of different things into like an overarching socioeconomic status. So that might be made up of numerous different things that are then sort of Zed scored and like averred out into this factor called socioeconomic status. Sometimes it's just postcode, but sometimes it also includes education or like even smoking and things like that, em which are all more prevalent in certain groups, I guess. because of inequality. Is there any evidence that something like substance use or smoking has any direct effect on hearing loss? it more just indirect that? m I think, and I'll say thinking here, is that smoking it may be ototoxic. So when I say ototoxic, like toxic to the hair cells in the air, m and that might be the link. Same with certain drugs and things like that. They can affect those hair cells and are toxic to them. I'd have to double check whether that's, and I think that is one of the possible mechanisms by which that happens. m Yeah, there's also some interesting stuff about like cardiovascular health and hearing health, like inflammation and the ability of like blood flow to the cochlear and all that kind of stuff, which is quite interesting. yeah, she's doing some work in that area. She'd be better to you about it. Yeah, so like there's kind of, and I think we've touched on quite a few topics now, so I'm going to ask my favourite question to ask. So I want us to pretend in today's world that you have been given unlimited funding, let's say, know, 20 to 30 million, you know, whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. The ethics boards are all on holiday for, you know, two weeks, so you've been given free range, what are ethics anymore? m I know, like I could see your face, wow. What would be your like dream experiment to run from, know, yeah, now? Wow, all the money in the world. No ethics. No ethics. This is what everyone will listen to, not the others, but we never happen. But we just like to, know, blue sky thinking, that's this. This is such a good question. It is so hard. Like my brain immediately goes to something very weird. Like a research city. Like a fully immersive, like, yeah, people are trying to like move out of the lab now, like use some more real world measures and stuff like that. my research world, research city, you go to a city the size of Manchester and it's just a massive research lab where everyone's connected to all different kinds of devices and measurements are being taken and you go into different environments, shops or whatever. It's just a whole city and it's research town. But then I'm like, that is very dystopian. I was about to say, I was about to say, isn't that basically what Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip would do? I don't want to be associated with that. Kate's really got some great ideas for a research city. She's at Lancaster University. Hit her up. Yeah, let me know Elon what you want to we can partner up maybe you could. He could chuck you a couple billion, he's got a few. Yeah, just one, one measly billion. could do it. Yeah, sure. So maybe that's a bit farfetched and also, but you said no ethics, so, and that's perfect for me and Elon and our partnership. there. Yeah, and you can test, you know, the different health inequalities. You know, could have like a North-South divide within this city. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, you know, we could build kind of like, oh, this gets really unethical, human versions of us who actually aren't human, but are they human because we'll get to this level of like thinking like humans and test on them. Oh, good. doubles. I mean, I mean, those are called twin studies. There is, there is. could, yeah, we could do that. Look at, yeah, all the different like set of divides, socioeconomic statuses, get all of the imaging equipment you could ever want. What's that show that that movie way realizes he's in like a massive TV show? Human show? It's very human show, isn't it? We just like at the end, like, by the way, this is all a massive research study. Yeah, and I think that's wrong. The idea is not good. So maybe, so maybe something more along the lines of like, in reality, if I had all the funds in the world and there was no ethics, or maybe a bit of ethics, like a uh biobank times a thousand, like a huge, massive study, like life long study, looking at people's hearing and brain outcomes from birth until the other one. m And, you know, really monitoring people longitudinally, like looking at like, It could tell you about detection, treatment, monitoring, or like biomarkers em in an ethical, bio-banky way, but just bigger and way more representative. So all different types of people, you'd go to them in their communities and, you know, that kind of thing, like a huge, massive lifetime study with 10,000 participants, 100,000. 100,000, 100,000 sold. You can have it. I think something along that as well, which you of touched on as well. I'm thinking about this because the last person we had on was a gentleman called Daniel and he does replication studies in South America because a lot of the studies that are done are all, you know, very, you know, westernized in terms of like Europe and America. So he tries to redo them. So like if we had like 100,000, we could do it. We could take it worldwide. We could have 60 weeks of improvement. Yeah, worldwide, worldwide, well, that was alright. Yeah, and I think that would be really cool. There's probably people already doing that kind of thing, maybe. But yeah, that would be amazing. I said it. Nobody copied me. I'm going for thick books. Like, like, Patton did say that you did it first. Although I learned something very weird about patent law that apparently for, this was actually one of the guests on the podcast a while ago called Keith Sawyer. He said that patent law is actually really weird because you can challenge something by saying that it, that it was obvious. So if, some, if you can convince the patent law that whatever idea was obvious, then you can take the patent away. my god. Okay. So you just need to show that this was, cause you can only patent things which are like really creative and non-obvious things. So. so like, that's a clearly an obvious invention. like I mean I would have done I would have done it if I had the money. Yeah, like I didn't think of it. I did watch Magnistan last night. Anyone? Well, I did. And you've reminded me a pattern of love through that. People are inventing very interesting things. Yeah. wild things have come out on a dragon's den recently. Yesterday was like smelly bananas that go in your shoes. Interesting. Interesting. a Jewish for the spelling. To be honest, was one where I was like, are these available now? Yeah, I'm sure my partner would love for me to those. a little look, yeah. I once thought I'd invented something which was, you know, like cans of Coke and things that you, once you open them, you can't close them again. I thought I'd invented a lid for those. And I was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Why has nobody done this? It already exists. It's one of those things. You think you've... yeah, there's all these things you think you invented. My pot, no, I probably actually, no, ignore that. I'm actually, I'll you afterwards. Not for the podcast. Just a minute. I find you want me to ask that. OK, after after after that tangent, um coming back, coming back to your research and duplicate. um Is there any because you've been part of so many studies? Is there any sort of thing which? I mean, let's just cut that. You've been part of studies. No. Is there anything interesting which you found in your research? uh Sort of anything which jumps out at you or did jump at you at the time? Yeah, that's so hard because I feel like whenever I'm doing a particular piece of research or study, I'm like so consumed by it and I find everything about it interesting even when all the p-values are not significant. I'm well. But I just think, yeah, I'm always so fascinated about what the next step for each of those studies is. So I'm still super fascinated by my PhD research. I've got plans at the moment to sort of get back into some of that work and take it a bit forwards with some new ideas. So I'm really interested in using measures that could be collected in the real world. that we have on our devices, because everyone has a smartwatch now, and using those measures that are collected from there to integrate with hearing aids maybe or something like that to measure listening effort in the real world and adjust hearing aid algorithms somehow, or maybe implement those kinds of measures in the clinic. And I'm really excited about that, because in my PhD research, I found that some of these cardiovascular measures do. respond reliably to changes in listening demand and the importance of listening or your motivation to listen. So it could be really exciting actually to bring some of these things forwards. And that's something that really fascinates me. em And at the moment we're finishing up. em we're preparing a publication based on the TMS research that I told you about with the alpha entrainment. So trying to boost alpha activity in the brain. And we've been looking at how that might, how we might be to do that and how it affects different brain regions differently based on age. Again, I won't say too much. You have to read the paper. But that's, I find that that's really... fascinating and we've got some interesting interesting data there that might suggest that you some of these techniques that we can use to boost brain activity might help m or benefit m certain functions that you typically wouldn't think about using brain simulation for I guess. So yeah, those things. and well, I'll look at the paper on that one. Before when I mentioned age, because you just mentioned, you really mentioned that like you losing your hearing as you get older, is that conception, would you say? So this is, you were saying like, think of something that was like a controversial statement or something, I thought of like, there's no such thing as age-related hearing loss, which I don't actually think is correct, because, you know, hearing loss does happen as we get older, but it may be that it's more like the accumulation of these lifestyle factors or noise exposure throughout your life rather than a specific, something that happens. as you get older, regardless. I think this can be a misconception with a lot of age associated conditions. I know that a lot of people think that dementia is just something that happens as you get older, which is not, it's disease. I think it's, yeah, I think that's with, I mean, with these things, age is a risk factor, but it may be that it's like some of these lifestyle factors that. that accumulate over the all life course that make it so that you are more likely to experience hearing loss as you get older or more steeper hearing loss maybe. interesting yes it's more of a not very controversial at all actually, but I mean, that's just the scary thing to do. I think it's like, I think a lot of people think like as you get older, you just lose your hearing like that, you know, it's just age-related hearing loss. Yeah, and I mean, yeah, definitely to do with that. you know, there are are other factors that might affect it. Yeah. I selective hearing gets more common the older you get. I remember my granddad would not respond to anything for ages, and then you whisper something at her and be like, yeah, is that what you said? And you'd be like, how have you heard this? I can't be bothered with the rest of it, but you're talking about food now, so. stuff. That's classic grandparent style. So you mentioned before, sometimes when you get no significance in p-values, you're fine with it. So not a lot people feel quite down when that happens. What keeps you motivated when experiments go wrong or you might not get the result that you were hoping for? What keeps you going? is such a good question because I think there's this whole thing of like you're desperate to. Because you're so passionate about something and you have a hypothesis and you believe it because it's evidence based, you've done the reading, you think something's going to happen. And then when it doesn't, of course, you maybe feel a bit disappointed. And there's a whole publication bias against, you know, non-significant results that they're less likely to get published. So we see significant data all the time, but that's because the non-significant data is less likely to be published. m And I think the data are what the data are. My PhD supervisor and postdoc PI taught me that, know, it is what it is. We can't control it. We've done our rigorous research. We have our results and these are what, this is what we found. It may be because of these reasons. It may be because of something else in a way it can get you to think a bit more broadly about what you've done, like question some of your methods maybe, or, you know, think about, you know, what the next step could be. em if it's not confirming what your original thoughts were, I guess. But yeah, I always feel a bit like, oh God, wish I would have found things significant, but you're not always gonna find that. I think somebody told me once that like out of 10 studies you do, eight are gonna have non-significant results and that's how it is. oh I think a non-significant result tells you a lot, right? I think non-significant results in themselves are significant. It says that you might be learning a lot of things, or it might be dispelling a misconception which we had about something because poor research which was significant was published before and so you're going off that. But in reality, maybe the trend is actually non-significant. Yeah. And we're obsessed with key values and maybe we shouldn't be at all. Let's go Bayesian. Yeah. As a guess is like an example, let's say, know, like having a cat boosts your ability, know, feature hearing ability when you get older and you don't, you know, you don't find that. And it's like, oh, actually you just find it the opposite. Like actually there's no significant cats have nothing to do with like hearing in any way. Is that true? it true? I don't know actually, is it true that cats only meow to humans? Yeah, I think that is true. Yeah, they are. Yeah. And some of them, specifically my cat Moose, knows how to meow like a baby. Meows is like... em you Do your neighbours think you might have a child? Yeah, I think so, especially in the morning when he's like aggressively screaming and then if he gets really really frustrated, it's just like, RAAA! And then it sounds like a child is like screaming. I like how towards the end of this podcast, it's just gonna be better doing cat noises. Yeah, it's descended into sort of cat impersonations. my other cat Thor didn't meow when we first got him and think Moose has taught him. So now he meows like... That's okay, I could do this all day, but we are here for science throughout the day. could you do? I'd do different types of cats. I won't, but I could. I wanted you all to know that I could go on for hours, but I'm saving us all. I'm saving us all. This this this laughing and communicating kind of is a very nice segue into Kate's comedy. So you're a stand up comedian. Both of you are actually bet bet is as well. You guys have done do lacks together as well. We do have a double act and I think we should we need to do it again Beth. It was great. I'm very much so here for it. Amy Gadala is here to terrify you once again. so fun. And you are as well, Sahir. I mean, I mean, I did it once. So, I mean, technically, if you if you stretch the thing. Count. very funny. It was very funny. It was very funny. But can you talk to us about this? got you interested in sort of like science communication and particularly like in doing it through comedy? Yeah, this is such a nice topic because I think it's something that we all love a lot. Obviously you host a podcast together. em But yeah, I've always been very m shy. Like I did not ever contribute in school. If there was ever like a group project, I was not volunteering to like do any of the speaking roles, nothing like that. just, I had maybe like a fear of public speaking. I don't know. But when I did my PhD, I had a conversation with my supervisor. It like, you have to sign up for things and it will kind of force you to do it. And I ended up, you know, doing a couple of talks and things and kind of fell in love with being able to talk about my research in a way that I... I could understand it in a way. It helped me to grasp what I was doing to be talking about it in a way that didn't use the terms that I'd only ever seen written down and all this kind of stuff. And I really started to enjoy it. And then when I was doing my postdoc, I did a lot of talks in the community. So going to older adult groups, talk to them about hearing and that kind of thing. And I loved that. And then I saw an advert for a year long. free online, not online, in-person science communication, like mentorship program with this person, Dr. Steve Cross, who is an engagement professional. And I'd done some workshops with him in the past and I thought that he was a great guy. And I saw that he was running this year long oh science communication mentorship program. And I signed up and then a month later I received an email like, send in your sets. I was like, send in my set? What do mean send in my set? He's like, yeah, you know, sign up for one of our stand up comedy events and you know, send in your set. What do you want about? Yeah, I wrote a stand up comedy set and then went and performed it. And it's one of those out of body experiences where you're like, I'm just doing this now. Like I've side questioned so hard that I'm now doing this. I have papers to write and yet here I am painting a cochlear onto my jeans and then. whipping it out. You We won't give any more context to that because m you have to come see one of Kate's shows to really truly appreciate the fantasticness of it all. but it was one of the, it's one of the best things I've done. And I, I've always loved, you know, bringing in like lightness and silliness. And I think it makes things a lot more accessible when you feel like it's okay to, it's okay to look a bit silly. It's okay to sound a bit silly. It's okay to ask questions that maybe seem a bit out there or. It's what you guys are doing with this, you know, it's okay to be curious and you don't have to know the answers. You don't have to sound, you know, a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain type of person to do or communicate science. It's for everyone. And I really, I feel quite passionate about that. oh And I think comedy is such a fun window. you can open into science. Like, science is ridiculous. We may as well tell people what we're doing because what we're doing is weird. Yeah, that's such a great way to put it. Yeah. And you you've, think like just the nice thing is like saying is like you, you know, you would in school, you're quite shy and then like just push comfort zone to be like, just give it a go because it's honestly, guess in science and the science and comedy world that yes, there is like a little kind of like, like niche where quite a lot of people are actually involved in. It's really, really supportive. if you want to get involved. nice. So, so, so nice. People want you to do well. They want to create events. They want you to bounce ideas off of them. And there's been things where they haven't gone as planned as you wanted them to. But honestly, it doesn't matter. People will remember the funny part, the very funny parts. But yeah, you've only just been hilarious because you hosted an event a few months ago and it was just so good. So good. it with me. Amy Gadala, host of the show. you, wasn't you? Yeah, yeah, I would recommend it to anyone. It's such a confidence building for ability to like change the way you communicate, to think about science in a different way, to make somebody excited about science through a silly story or a comedic story, I think is really powerful. And I think just having joy in life is so important, you know. It's underrated. Like, let's have a bit more joy. Yeah, let's combine our favourite things, the brain and having fun. Great! Sounds like the dream. Sounds like the dream. Yeah, it's such so, so fun. It's obviously horrible and stressful and nearly cry every time, but also fun. It's addictive. It's like after you don't, you're like, again, like, I'm not going to do that month of, know, dressing. Is this going to be funny for that half an hour afterwards where I feel great? Yeah. there's not a lot of opportunity in science that people like literally cheer you. And when it happens, uh Not once have I been to a conference where someone's giving like a standing ovation and laugh with you. You go on you tell a few jokes about whatever and they're like this is clap clap clap laugh laugh laugh. Look at me. Yes, I'm like, I'm the most amazing person for the next half hour. Yeah, but I've had people come up to me after it's like, I'm going to try it. I'm going to do it. Or, you know, that's, that's really cool. I'm so glad you said that. Or I'm like, I'm really glad you said that you, you, you know, you weren't clever in school or you weren't like the cleverest in the class or whatever. It's made me think differently about science. And I think just like open communication, authentic people in science and just, you know, we're all daft. So let's just get up on stage and be daft. This is true. uh made you guys want to... So you both came to Science Comedy recently. Can I interview you? m course, of course. I was switching it up. Doctors confess. Confess why you got into science communication. Yeah, what made what? What was your thing? Because you came up with this idea for the British and British Neuroscience Festival sorry about, you know, putting on an event, a comedy event, which Yeah, so it was for the British Neuroscience Association. They had some money available there and I've been working with them and I've done quite a lot of science communication stuff and loved it. And my mum told me I was really funny. So I did get a big head on that and I was like, you know what, why not? You know, I'll organise it and then I'll see if I want to get involved in it. And I was like, you know what, why not? Yeah, so I just thought like, what's a good way, you know, that we can bring the brain and science together. And I actually didn't really know there was like a really big, I kind of knew a couple of science comedians. But then with Susanna Walker, she was like, get in touch with Kate Slade because she will also love this. So that's when like me and you like mess up like, know, in 2020, end of 2024, was it like October, And we're like, yeah, nearly a year ago actually. And yeah, obviously like you were like. You were like, yeah, you can do this, you can do this. And it was like perfect because I hadn't, you know, run one before. And yeah, it was really good. It was like almost sold out, I think, for both the evening. Thank you. what a smash for your first science comedy event. So, Neuro Knights, what a dream. But I didn't really come without like everybody like, first of all, signing up, like Kate, like guiding me on like kind of where to go. And then everybody else like Adash, Sarah, Ben, gosh, who else is in the group? I it was the main ones, like all getting involved and, you know, putting it together. It was a very much so a group effort. But it was my baby. It was my child. It still is. I would like to another one. Yeah. And yet you just get to have fun. It's just can be as wacky as you want to. Like when my partner came to one of the events, they were like, this literally has you written all over it. I can just see it. It's just so like beautifully chaotic, like organized chaos, but it's working so beautifully well. Like you, when I was like, great, that is okay. As long as it works well, that's fine. But. Yeah, it was a very enjoyable experience. I'd like to do again. I would like to, I will, I will do it again. In I planned to do it in November, so I am going to do it again. Everybody come watch Beth November. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In Liverpool, again? Or Manchester this time? Where is it? Are you going to go to it, Kate? Yeah, I'm gonna try. What is it? I don't know, they haven't said it yet. Do we? No, have to, you have to, you have to, this is you. You gotta go up on your own. is... Yeah, and then we do a thing. We do our own thing together. Yeah. I mean, obviously I love you and I would love to do it with you, but I think also you would be, this would be a great... Way to introduce her on her own and then see where she stands. Yeah, who knows, who knows? Yeah. Yeah, you did such an amazing job. And I remember that first meeting with you online. oh So good. You know, you meet someone, you're like, this is such a great person. What a great energy. Like, so good. said to me, she's like, I was like, she was just saying like, okay, it's like, said, you're just gonna really like her. I just really know you two are gonna get on incredibly well. I was like, okay. I was like, afterwards I was like, I see what you meant, Susanna. Yeah, good energy. So nice. So nice. And you as well Sahir, obviously. But you weren't in that first one thing. But when I met you, I felt the same. No, I was not. Stand-up comedy is what, like, yeah, Beth got me into it for that. I literally got a text from her being like, I need you to do something for me. I was like, what? She's like, sign up for this. I'm afraid we won't get many people signing up at that point in time. I was like, OK, cool, I'll sign up. And then we got so many people by the end of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was it was great. It was yeah and your set was fantastic. Yeah, you're amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. ah can talk about this after the podcast. Still recording. Sorry, my bad. No, no, no. Awesome. Were there any other questions I don't think so. Thank you for having me. This has been really fun. It makes me, yeah, it's really nice to talk about stuff because then you get a bit of like, I have done some things. I think when you asked me to do this, I was like, I don't think I've done anything. I want nothing to talk about. Yes, I generally think we could have carried on talking for like a lot longer. I've got many questions still to ask. Yeah, this has been really, really nice. And yeah, I'll just do it as claim. I'm not sure if anything I said was correct. Thanks. Bye. Yeah, well, we're waiting on that I'm stopping recording on that. Thanks everybody for listening Bye!