Dataset Information

Visual short-term memory binding deficit with age-related hearing loss in cognitively normal older adults.

ABSTRACT: Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) has been posited as a possible modifiable risk factor for neurocognitive impairment and dementia. Measures sensitive to early neurocognitive changes associated with ARHL would help to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning this relationship. We hypothesized that ARHL might be associated with decline in visual short-term memory binding (VSTMB), a potential biomarker for preclinical dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). We examined differences in accuracy between older adults with hearing loss and a control group on the VSTMB task from a single feature (shapes) condition to a feature binding (shapes-colors) condition. Hearing loss was associated with a weaker capacity to process bound features which appeared to be accounted for by a weaker sensitivity for change detection (A'). Our findings give insight into the neural mechanisms underpinning neurocognitive decline with ARHL and its temporal sequence.

SUBMITTER: Loughrey DG

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6715732 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Visual short-term memory binding deficit with age-related hearing loss in cognitively normal older adults.

Loughrey David G DG Parra Mario A MA Lawlor Brian A BA

Scientific reports 20190829 1

Age-related hearing loss (ARHL) has been posited as a possible modifiable risk factor for neurocognitive impairment and dementia. Measures sensitive to early neurocognitive changes associated with ARHL would help to elucidate the mechanisms underpinning this relationship. We hypothesized that ARHL might be associated with decline in visual short-term memory binding (VSTMB), a potential biomarker for preclinical dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). We examined differences in accuracy between ...[more]

PMID: 31467387

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Project description:ObjectivesThe goal of this study was to identify the effects of auditory deprivation (age-related hearing loss) and auditory stimulation (history of hearing aid use) on the neural registration of sound across two stimulus presentation conditions: (1) equal sound pressure level and (2) equal sensation level.DesignWe used a between-groups design, involving three groups of 14 older adults (n = 42; 62 to 84 years): (1) clinically defined normal hearing (≤25 dB from 250 to 8000 Hz, bilaterally), (2) bilateral mild-moderate/moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss who have never used hearing aids, and (3) bilateral mild-moderate/moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss who have worn bilateral hearing aids for at least the past 2 years.ResultsThere were significant delays in the auditory P1-N1-P2 complex in older adults with hearing loss compared with their normal hearing peers when using equal sound pressure levels for all participants. However, when the degree and configuration of hearing loss were accounted for through the presentation of equal sensation level stimuli, no latency delays were observed. These results suggest that stimulus audibility modulates P1-N1-P2 morphology and should be controlled for when defining deprivation and stimulus-related neuroplasticity in people with hearing loss. Moreover, a history of auditory stimulation, in the form of hearing aid use, does not appreciably alter the neural registration of unaided auditory evoked brain activity when quantified by the P1-N1-P2.ConclusionsWhen comparing auditory cortical responses in older adults with and without hearing loss, stimulus audibility, and not hearing loss-related neurophysiological changes, results in delayed response latency for those with age-related hearing loss. Future studies should carefully consider stimulus presentation levels when drawing conclusions about deprivation- and stimulation-related neuroplasticity. Additionally, auditory stimulation, in the form of a history of hearing aid use, does not significantly affect the neural registration of sound when quantified using the P1-N1-P2-evoked response.

Project description:Long-term episodic memory deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) are well characterised but, until recently, short-term memory (STM) function has attracted far less attention. We employed a recently-developed, delayed reproduction task which requires participants to reproduce precisely the remembered location of items they had seen only seconds previously. This paradigm provides not only a continuous measure of localization error in memory, but also an index of relational binding by determining the frequency with which an object is misplaced to the location of one of the other items held in memory. Such binding errors in STM have previously been found on this task to be sensitive to medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage in focal lesion cases. Twenty individuals with pathological mutations in presenilin 1 or amyloid precursor protein genes for familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD) were tested together with 62 healthy controls. Participants were assessed using the delayed reproduction memory task, a standard neuropsychological battery and structural MRI. Overall, FAD mutation carriers were worse than controls for object identity as well as in gross localization memory performance. Moreover, they showed greater misbinding of object identity and location than healthy controls. Thus they would often mislocalize a correctly-identified item to the location of one of the other items held in memory. Significantly, asymptomatic gene carriers - who performed similarly to healthy controls on standard neuropsychological tests - had a specific impairment in object-location binding, despite intact memory for object identity and location. Consistent with the hypothesis that the hippocampus is critically involved in relational binding regardless of memory duration, decreased hippocampal volume across FAD participants was significantly associated with deficits in object-location binding but not with recall precision for object identity or localization. Object-location binding may therefore provide a sensitive cognitive biomarker for MTL dysfunction in a range of diseases including AD.

Dataset Information

Visual short-term memory binding deficit with age-related hearing loss in cognitively normal older adults.

Publications

Visual short-term memory binding deficit with age-related hearing loss in cognitively normal older adults.

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