The peripheral hearing and central auditory processing skills of individuals with subjective memory complaints

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundWith no cure or effective treatment currently in sight, it is critical to identify those factors that may prevent or delay cognitive decline and dementia in older adults, it is important to focus on potentially modifiable risk factors. Untreated hearing loss contributes up to about 9% of the modifiable risk factors in mid‐life (Livingston et al., 2017).MethodA total of 95 participants were recruited from the larger Western Australia Memory Study and were classified as SMCs (N = 61; 20 males and 41 females, mean age 71.47 + 7.19 years) and non‐SMCs (N = 34; 10 males, 24 females, mean age 68.85 + 7.70 years). All participants completed a peripheral hearing assessment, a CAP assessment battery (Dichotic Digits, Duration Pattern Test, Dichotic Sentence Identification, Synthetic Sentence Identification with Ipsilateral Competing Message and the Quick‐Speech‐in‐Noise) and a cognitive screening assessment.ResultThe SMCs group performed significantly poorer than the control group on Synthetic Sentence Identification with Ipsilateral Competing Message ‐10dB and ‐20 dB Signal to Noise Ratio conditions. No significant differences were found between the two groups on the peripheral hearing threshold measurements.ConclusionThe results suggest that individuals with SMCs perform poorly in CAP assessments in comparison to the controls. The poor CAP in SMC individuals may result in a greater cost to their finite pool of cognitive resources. The CAP results provide yet another biomarker that supports the hypothesis that SMCs may be a primary indication on neuropathological changes in the brain affecting various functions. Longitudinal follow up of individuals with SMCs and decreased CAP abilities should inform whether this group is at higher risk of developing dementia as compared to non‐SMCs and to those SMC individuals without CAP difficulties.