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About six years ago, hearing researcher Dr. Kelly Miles had a stroke just a week after having a baby.

The medical emergency left her unable to speak or read.

While her language recovered relatively quickly, she continued to struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments, not because of peripheral hearing loss, but because of the way her brain was processing sound and communication after the stroke.

"I really started to understand the problem of people who have difficulties hearing," says Miles, an MQ-Sonova research fellow at Macquarie University Hearing.

"Before I had the stroke, I was really thinking about it from an academic perspective, but afterward I really felt the impact of struggling to communicate with people."

It also made her question some of the conventional advice given to people who find communication difficult, such as socializing one-on-one in quiet environments.

"I'm 40.…