The Virtual Morris Water Task in 64 Patients With Bilateral Vestibulopathy and the Impact of Hearing Status

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated spatial cognitive deficits in patients with bilateral vestibulopathy (BVP). However, BVP patients frequently present with a concomitant sensorineural hearing loss, which is a well-established risk factor of cognitive impairment and incident dementia. Nonetheless, previous research on spatial cognitive deficits in BVP patients have not taken hearing status into account. Objective: This study aims to compare spatial cognition of BVP patients with healthy controls, with analyses adjusting for hearing status. Methods: Spatial cognition was assessed in 64 BVP patients and 46 healthy controls (HC) by use of the Virtual Morris Water Task (VMWT). All statistical analyses were adjusted for hearing (dys)function, sex, age, education, and computer use. Results: Overall, patients with BVP performed worse on all outcome measures of the VMWT. However, these differences between BVP patients and healthy controls were not statistically significant. Nonetheless, a statistically significant link between sensorineural hearing loss and spatial cognition was observed. The worse the hearing, the longer subjects took to reach the hidden platform in the VMWT. Furthermore, the worse the hearing, the less time was spent by the subjects in the correct platform quadrant during the probe trial of the VMWT. Conclusion: In this study, no difference was found regarding spatial cognition between BVP patients and healthy controls. However, a statistically significant link was observed between sensorineural hearing loss and spatial cognition.

The Effect of Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation on Visuospatial Cognition in an Incomplete Bilateral Vestibular Deafferentation Mouse Model

“…In line with our findings, deficiencies in gait, locomotor activity, and spatial memory following BVD have been extensively described in both humans and other animals (17,(48)(49)(50)(51). Vestibular signals make major contributions to balance and spatial memory functions via multisensory convergent and multimodal signaling pathways (1,2,11,12).…”

Vestibular dysfunction is an important contributor to the aging of visuospatial ability in older adults–Data from a computerized test system

“…Secondly, it has also been proposed that subjects do not rely on vestibular input from actual movement when completing such computerized task and only need to remain seated during the test, and attentional resources can be directed exclusively to the spatial memory task ( 41 ). Therefore, a purely static test setup may not be sufficient to capture the degree of impairment in real-life in patients with vestibular dysfunction.…”

The Cognitive-Vestibular Compensation Hypothesis: How Cognitive Impairments Might Be the Cost of Coping With Compensation

“…Recent research showed that cognitive function could be affected differently by each pathology, with specific challenges in immediate memory and language tasks for SNHL patients, and worse performance in attention tasks for VL patients (Dobbels et al, 2019). Statistically significant differences on the VMWT have been found between VL patients and healthy controls in studies where some VL patients (only one or two patients on the total sample) had mild hearing loss (Brandt et al, 2005;Kremmyda et al, 2016); whereas no differences were found in a larger VL patients sample when adjusting for hearing status (Dobbels et al, 2020).…”