Macquarie University hearing researchers have discovered how our brains learn to listen, and how this can help us understand speech in noisy, echo-filled spaces.

The research, published in eLife, looks at how we can unconsciously adjust to different kinds of background noise.

Building on earlier work that showed animals’ brains quickly adapt to changes in sound levels, the new study is the first to show how humans adapt to echoey environments to improve their speech understanding.