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Otology/Neurotology

(155) Effect of Hearing Aids on Cognitive Function

Monday, October 2, 2023
2:45 PM – 3:45 PM East Coast USA Time
Has Audio

    Co-Author(s)

  • DK

    Dohee Kim, n/a

    Dept of ORL-HNS, Seoul National University Hospital, USA

    • Presenting Author(s)

  • JC

    Jiwon Choi

    Graduate student
    Dept of ORL-HNS, Seoul National University Hospital
    Seoul, Seoul-t'ukpyolsi, Republic of Korea

    • Senior Author(s)

  • JL

    Jun Ho Lee

    Professor
    Seoul National University College of Medicine Seoul National University Hospital
    Seoul, Seoul-t'ukpyolsi, Republic of Korea

Disclosure(s):
Jiwon Choi: No relevant relationships to disclose.
Jun Ho Lee: No relevant relationships to disclose.


Introduction: There is a growing body of research that indicates a strong association between dementia and hearing loss. However, the underlying neural mechanisms linking these two conditions are not yet fully understood.

Methods: To investigate the impact of hearing aids (HA) on cognitive function, we conducted a 12-month follow-up study that compared the cognitive profiles of elderly patients with age-related hearing loss who used hearing aids to those who rejected the use of hearing aids. A total of 29 patients participated in our study, with 17 patients assigned to the HA group and 12 patients assigned to the non-HA group. Behavioral cognition tasks and neuroimaging using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) with 48 channels covering the frontal lobe were performed during 8 cognitive tasks.

Results: Our findings indicate that the HA group showed significant improvements in cognitive function after one year in all cognitive tasks, while the non-HA group showed a decrease in cognitive function in 5 out of 8 cognitive tasks. Additionally, we observed a significant decrease in neural activity in working memory tasks after one year of wearing HA, suggesting decreased listening effort. In contrast, the non-HA group showed an increase in neural activity after one year even in basic working memory tasks, suggesting increased listening effort due to untreated hearing loss. Furthermore, in the HA group, the brain demonstrated an ability to maintain neural activity in cognitive tasks even when they were performed at a high level of difficulty, indicating that the brain did not relinquish the task despite its challenging nature. Conversely, in the non-HA group, there was a marked decline in neural activity in cognitive tasks that were performed at a high level of difficulty, which can be attributed to the fact that the task was abandoned due to inaudibility, resulting in a disappearance of neural activity.

Conclusions: Collectively, our findings suggest that HA in the elderly with age-related hearing loss may contribute to the preservation of cognitive deterioration in nature as evidenced by neurocognitive and neuroimaging approaches.