Hearing Loss and Cognition

Time to Read: 4 minutes

This is a transcript to Audiologist Cara Sutton’s video on Hearing Loss and Cognition. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Subscribing, hitting the like button, sharing the video and leaving a comment ensures you never miss a video, and YouTube makes it easier for other people to find these helpful videos.

 

Hi there, my name is Cara and I'm a clinical audiologist from Value Hearing.

This month is hearing awareness month and so we wanted to upload a video each week to discuss a topic on hearing loss and the first topic i want to discuss with you is how hearing loss affects memory.

More than half of adults over 60 have some degree of hearing loss.

It's really quite scary to think that people take, on average, about seven years from time of onset until they actually receive treatment for their hearing loss. Early detection is so important and prescription of hearing aids will really help maximise your hearing and keep your brain engaged and active.

Unfortunately a lack of auditory stimulation starts to affect the hearing centres of the brain and actually causes them to atrophy, so the connection between the brain and the ear starts to weaken.

Studies have shown that people with hearing loss are two times more likely to develop cognitive impairment than those with normal hearing. So as people say, you have to use it or you lose it.

The part of the brain typically associated with long-term memory for places and events is also involved in short-term storage and manipulation of auditory information, so you can see that there's a strong link between hearing and memory.

Lack of auditory input can really start to affect a person negatively. It can affect their mood negatively. It can lead to feelings of depression. It can cause social isolation. Unfortunately all of these things are risk factors for memory loss.

So the good news is that early detection of hearing loss provides you with more options to maximise your best hearing and to keep your brain active and stimulated.

At Value Hearing we offer comprehensive hearing assessments where we test speech-in-quiet and speech-in-noise. The test we use to test speech-in-noise is the QuickSIN. 

The QuickSIN is a lovely test that gives us a really good idea of how you are coping in background noise. Some people really don't cope at all in background noise, so we know those people would need a hearing aid that has more noise features in it to help give them the best hearing outcomes. There are also some people who cope really well in background noise so we know for those people, we don't have to over prescribe a hearing aid to them.

If you would like to test how well you are coping and how your hearing is doing, please feel free to book in an assessment with us. And feel free to bring your spouse with you and we will assess them too.

Please know that all our assessments are free of charge so it's a no strings attached assessment.

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