Adjunct Methods for Alzheimer’s Disease Detection: A Review of Auditory Evoked Potentials

Abstract

The auditory afferent pathway as a clinical marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has sparked interest in investigating the relationship between age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and AD. Given the earlier onset of ARHL compared to cognitive impairment caused by AD, there is a growing emphasis on early diagnosis and intervention to postpone or prevent the progression from ARHL to AD. In this context, auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) have emerged as a widely used objective auditory electrophysiological technique for both the clinical diagnosis and animal experimentation in ARHL due to their non-invasive and repeatable nature. This review focuses on the application of AEPs in AD detection and the auditory nerve system corresponding to different latencies of AEPs. Our objective was to establish AEPs as a systematic and non-invasive adjunct method for enhancing the diagnostic accuracy of AD. The success of AEPs in the early detection and prediction of AD in research settings underscores the need for further clinical application and study.