Auditory Cortex Signs of Age-Related Hearing Loss

Abstract

Age-related hearing loss, or presbyacusis, is a major public health problem that causes communication difficulties and is associated with diminished quality of life. Limited satisfaction with hearing aids, particularly in noisy listening conditions, suggests that central nervous system declines occur with presbyacusis and may limit the efficacy of interventions focused solely on improving audibility. This study of 49 older adults (M069.58, SD08.22 years; 29 female) was designed to examine the extent to which low and/or high frequency hearing loss was related to auditory cortex morphology. Low and high frequency hearing constructs were obtained from a factor analysis of audiograms from these older adults and 1,704 audiograms from an independent sample of older adults. Significant region of interest and voxel-wise gray matter volume associations were observed for the high frequency hearing construct. These effects occurred most robustly in a primary auditory cortex region (Te1.0) where there was also elevated cerebrospinal fluid with high frequency hearing loss, suggesting that auditory cortex atrophies with high frequency hearing loss. These results indicate that Te1.0 is particularly affected by high frequency hearing loss and may be a target for evaluating the efficacy of interventions for hearing loss.

White Matter Hyperintensities Predict Low Frequency Hearing in Older Adults

“…The low and high frequency hearing estimates used in this study were derived from a factor analysis of pure tone hearing thresholds in a very large sample of audiograms from older adults that identified two hearing components (Eckert et al 2012), which also were observed in a previous factor analysis of audiograms from older adults (Jerger and Chmiel 1997). While the low frequency estimate is not by itself a marker of metabolic presbyacusis, people with metabolic presbyacusis are more likely to have elevated low frequency thresholds than people whose hearing loss is due to sensory cell loss secondary to noise or ototoxic drug exposure (Schmiedt 2010).…”

“…Low frequency and high frequency hearing metrics were obtained by standardizing the hearing thresholds relative to the factor analysis weights from a large sample of older adult audiograms that are reported by Eckert et al (2012). Specifically, factor analysis weights derived from the thresholds of 1,704 ears (mean age 0 69.92 years [SD07.24] that was 56 % female), which are presented in Table 1 of Eckert et al (2012), were applied to the thresholds in the current study by: (1) standardizing each pure tone threshold to the respective mean and SD of 1,704 ears; (2) multiplying the standardized pure tone score by the respective pure tone frequency component coefficient; and (3) summing the values from step 2 for each component across pure tone variables. These statistically independent low and high frequency hearing metrics (r (70) 0 −0.10, ns) provided hearing estimates that are normalized relative to hearing thresholds in the population and were used in analyses with the brain imaging metrics described below.…”

Time is of the essence in speech perception! : Get it fast, or think about it

“…The main consequence of hearing loss is an obvious difficulty in clearly perceiving auditory speech signals. Research has also shown that hearing loss is associated with cognitive decline (Lin et al, 2013;Rönnberg et al, 2011;Wong, Yu, Chan, & Tong, 2014), structural changes in the brain (Boyen, Langers, de Kleine, & van Dijk, 2013;Eckert, Cute, Vaden, Kuchinsky, & Dubno, 2012;Lin et al, 2014;Peelle, Troiani, Grossman, & Wingfield, 2011), mental health problems such as depression (e.g., Li et al, 2014) and social isolation (e.g., Weinstein & Ventry, 1982).…”

“…However, when target speech stimuli were embedded within a congruent semantic context (in particular in HP sentences), the difference between the two groups disappeared. This inferior performance of EHA users relative to ENH might be because of poorer sensory coding (that is not compensated for by hearing aid use) or may be caused by the adverse effects of age-related hearing loss on the brain areas responsible for processing auditory speech stimuli (Boyen et al, 2013;Eckert et al, 2012;Husain et al, 2011;Peelle et al, 2011). Structural changes in the brains of hearing-impaired individuals may explain why amplification of sounds by hearing aids was not fully successful to compensate for the hearing difficulty of hearing aid users to the level of their matched normal hearing controls.…”

Sensorineural Hearing Impairment and Subclinical Atherosclerosis in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Without Traditional Cardiovascular Risk Factors

“…5,6 Despite of the increasing number of research about this topic, there is no clear evidence indicating that RA per se might be a direct cause of HI since the physiopathology remains unclear. 4,7,[11][12][13] There is no consensus about methods to perform, when to screen for HI in RA patients with audiometric and clinical methods, or usefulness of these methods.…”