Lace Pro trains the brain to process sound. It does not change hearing itself, so a patient’s audiogram will look the same after the program as before it.
The measured gains are in speech understanding. Neurotone reports consistent improvement on three tests after training. QuickSIN and HINT measure how well someone follows speech against background noise. The Frequency Following Response is an electrical recording of how the brain responds to speech sounds. The QuickSIN gains are reported after about 30 days, and the largest come from patients who started with the most difficulty in noise, whatever their audiogram showed.
The exercises target the skills that underlie those scores: following speech in noise, keeping up with fast talkers, and working memory, meaning the ability to hold and process what was just said. Neurotone describes these as processing speed, attention, focus and memory. It also claims the training improves cognition and working memory more generally. That claim rests on weaker ground than the speech-in-noise results.
Patients or the company mostly report the practical outcomes, so treat them with more caution. They include less listening fatigue, more confidence in social settings, more consistent hearing aid use and fewer hearing aid returns. The return figure of up to 90% comes from US studies, several run with industry partners.
The firmest claim is that patients get better at the listening tasks they practise. How far that carries into a noisy restaurant varies from person to person. Neurotone’s site does not support any claim that the program prevents cognitive decline.
Most people who come to The Audiology Place have been missing parts of conversations for years before they book a hearing test. Over that time the brain adjusts to a quieter world. When hearing aids bring back the soft, high-pitched consonants that carry much of the meaning in speech (s, f, th and sh), the brain has to relearn what to do with them. Some patients adapt within a few weeks. Others find that cafés, family dinners and work meetings are still exhausting, and a few conclude that their hearing aids have let them down.
In most of those cases the hearing aids are doing their job. Amplification makes sound audible, but understanding speech in a noisy room depends on how quickly the brain can separate one voice from the clatter around it, fill in the words it missed and keep hold of the thread of a sentence. Those are skills, and skills respond to practice. Lace Pro is a home training program built to provide that practice.
What Lace Pro is
LACE stands for Listening and Communication Enhancement. Audiologists Robert Sweetow and Jennifer Henderson Sabes developed it at the University of California, San Francisco, and clinics have prescribed it for more than 20 years. Its developer, Neurotone, says over 80 published papers discuss the program. Lace Pro, previously marketed as LACE AI, is the current version: an app patients use at home, with exercises that adjust in difficulty as their performance changes.
The exercises target the skills that break down in difficult listening. Patients follow speech against background noise, keep up with fast talkers and complete working-memory tasks that train them to hold and process what they have just heard. The library runs to more than 10,000 exercises across over 30 topics, so the material stays varied over weeks of use. Patients can also train with recordings of a partner’s or grandchild’s voice, which ties the practice to the conversations they care about most. The app teaches communication strategies for difficult listening situations as well.
Who it suits
Lace Pro is most useful in the first months with new hearing aids, when the brain is adjusting and motivation is high. It also suits long-term hearing aid wearers who still struggle in noise, and people whose hearing test looks reasonable but who find group conversation hard work. Neurotone reports that patients with the most difficulty hearing in noise, as measured by the QuickSIN test, tend to improve the most, regardless of what their audiogram shows.
Because the training works on listening skills rather than on a device, it pairs equally well with Phonak, Oticon, Signia, Widex, Starkey or any other brand. For an independent clinic that matters. We recommend it on the basis of a patient’s needs, and no manufacturer has a stake in the decision. The program is designed for adults and is not tailored to young children.
What the evidence shows
The research on LACE is more extensive than for most auditory training programs. Neurotone’s data show average improvements in QuickSIN scores after about 30 days of training. The company also cites four studies, including trials run with Starkey and Sycle, in which hearing aid return rates fell by up to 90% when patients used LACE alongside their devices.
Those figures need some context. The return-rate studies were run in the United States, several of them with industry partners. Independent reviews of auditory training in general find that people reliably improve at the tasks they practise, while the carry-over to everyday listening varies more from person to person. Claims that training protects against cognitive decline have not been established. A fair summary is that Lace Pro helps many people listen with less effort, and the people who benefit most are those who finish the program.
How it fits with your care
At The Audiology Place, Lace Pro sits alongside the hearing aid fitting and does not replace any part of it. We fit and fine-tune your hearing aids first, and training starts in the first weeks of wearing them. Your audiologist can see your progress through the clinic portal, so at your follow-up appointment we know which skills have improved and which are lagging. Sometimes the results point to a change in the hearing aid settings. Sometimes they show that a patient needs more time with one particular kind of listening, such as speech in a crowded room.
The program asks for short, regular sessions over about a month. Patients who treat it like physiotherapy, a little each day, see more change than those who complete a burst of sessions in the first week and then stop.
