Dataset Information

Cognitive Flexibility and Inhibition in Individuals with Age-Related Hearing Loss.

ABSTRACT: Growing evidence suggests alterations in cognitive control processes in individuals with varying degrees of age-related hearing loss (ARHL); however, alterations in those with unaided mild ARHL are understudied. The current study examined two cognitive control processes, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition, in 21 older adults with unaided mild ARHL and 18 age- and education-matched normal hearing (NH) controls. All participants underwent comprehensive audiological and cognitive evaluations including Trail Making Test-B, Verbal Fluency, Stroop, and two Go/NoGo tasks. Group differences in cognitive flexibility and inhibition as well as associations between peripheral and central hearing ability and measures of cognitive flexibility and inhibition were investigated. Findings revealed that the ARHL group took significantly longer to complete the Stroop task and had higher error rates on NoGo trials on both Go/NoGo tasks relative to the NH controls. Additionally, poorer peripheral and central hearing were associated with poorer cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. Our findings suggest slower and more inefficient inhibitory control in the mild ARHL group relative to the NH group and add to decades of research on the association between hearing and cognition.

SUBMITTER: Shende SA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8006052 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Cognitive Flexibility and Inhibition in Individuals with Age-Related Hearing Loss.

Shende Shraddha A SA Nguyen Lydia T LT Lydon Elizabeth A EA Husain Fatima T FT Mudar Raksha A RA

Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) 20210305 1

Growing evidence suggests alterations in cognitive control processes in individuals with varying degrees of age-related hearing loss (ARHL); however, alterations in those with unaided mild ARHL are understudied. The current study examined two cognitive control processes, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition, in 21 older adults with unaided mild ARHL and 18 age- and education-matched normal hearing (NH) controls. All participants underwent comprehensive audiological and cognitive evaluations inc ...[more]

PMID: 33807842

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Project description:ImportanceAge-related hearing loss is highly prevalent and has recently been associated with numerous morbid conditions of aging. Late-life depression is also prevalent and can be resistant to available treatments. Preliminary studies examining the association between hearing loss and late-life depression have been limited by subjective hearing measures, small sample sizes, and primarily white populations.ObjectiveTo assess whether a cross-sectional association exists between objective audiometric hearing loss and depressive symptoms in older Hispanic adults.Design, setting, and participantsThis cross-sectional study uses 2008-2011 Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos data collected in Miami, Florida, San Diego, California, Chicago, Illinois, or the Bronx, New York, from 5328 Hispanic adults 50 years or older who had exposure, outcome, and covariate data. Data analyses were conducted from March 2018 to September 2018.ExposureAudiometric hearing loss (pure-tone average).Main outcomes and measuresCenter for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, 10-item version (CESD-10) score of 10 or higher, which indicates clinically significant depressive symptoms.ResultsThe median age (interquartile range) of the 5328 participants was 58 (53-63) years, and 3283 participants (61.6%) were female. The mean (SD) CESD-10 score was 7.7 (6.4). Of the 5328 included participants, 1751 (32.9%) had clinically significant depressive symptoms. The odds of having these symptoms increased 1.44 (95% CI, 1.27-1.63) times for every 20 dB of hearing loss, adjusting for hearing aid use, age, sex, educational level, study site, geographic background, cardiovascular disease, and antidepressant use. Compared with those for individuals with normal hearing (0 dB), the odds of having clinically significant depressive symptoms was 1.81 (95% CI, 1.48-2.22) times as high in individuals with mild hearing loss (median threshold, 32.5 dB), 2.38 (95% CI, 1.77-3.20) times as high in individuals with moderate hearing loss (median threshold, 47.5 dB), and 4.30 (95% CI, 2.61-7.09) times as high in individuals with severe hearing loss (median threshold, 80 dB).Conclusions and relevanceObjective hearing loss appears to be associated with clinically significant depressive symptoms in older Hispanic people, with greater hearing loss seemingly associated with greater odds of having depressive symptoms. Given the high prevalence of untreated hearing loss in older adults, hearing loss may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for late-life depression.

Project description:Progressive hearing loss is a common phenomenon in healthy aging and may affect the perception of emotions expressed in speech. Elderly with mild to moderate hearing loss often rate emotional expressions as less emotional and display reduced activity in emotion-sensitive brain areas (e.g., amygdala). However, it is not clear how hearing loss affects cognitive and emotional control mechanisms engaged in multimodal speech processing. In previous work we showed that negative, task-relevant and -irrelevant emotion modulates the two types of control in younger and older adults without hearing loss. To further explore how reduced hearing capacity affects emotional and cognitive control, we tested whether moderate hearing loss (>30 dB) at frequencies relevant for speech impacts cognitive and emotional control. We tested two groups of older adults with hearing loss (HL; N = 21; mean age = 70.5) and without hearing loss (NH; N = 21; mean age = 68.4). In two EEG experiments participants observed multimodal video clips and either categorized pronounced vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotions (emotional conflict). Importantly, the facial expressions were either matched or mismatched with the corresponding vocalizations. In both conflict tasks, we found that negative stimuli modulated behavioral conflict processing in the NH but not the HL group, while the HL group performed at chance level in the emotional conflict task. Further, we found that the amplitude difference between congruent and incongruent stimuli was larger in negative relative to neutral N100 responses across tasks and groups. Lastly, in the emotional conflict task, neutral stimuli elicited a smaller N200 response than emotional stimuli primarily in the HL group. Consequently, age-related hearing loss not only affects the processing of emotional acoustic cues but also alters the behavioral benefits of emotional stimuli on cognitive and emotional control, despite preserved early neural responses. The resulting difficulties in the multimodal integration of incongruent emotional stimuli may lead to problems in processing complex social information (irony, sarcasm) and impact emotion processing in the limbic network. This could be related to social isolation and depression observed in the elderly with age-related hearing loss.

Dataset Information

Cognitive Flexibility and Inhibition in Individuals with Age-Related Hearing Loss.

Publications

Cognitive Flexibility and Inhibition in Individuals with Age-Related Hearing Loss.

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