ABSTRACT
Purpose
To determine if auditory skills test results correlated with cognitive performance and evaluate their influence on hearing aid fittings in the elderly population.
Methods
This study was carried out with 12 hearing-impaired individuals over 60 years of age. They were cognitively assessed with the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) battery assessment. The instruments used to evaluate resolution and temporal ordering, as well as separation and binaural integration, were the Random Gap Detection Test, Duration Pattern Sequence and Pitch Pattern Sequence, and Dichotic Digits Tests. Their auditory abilities were evaluated before and three months after the hearing aid fittings. The data were statistically correlated to the data obtained from the cognitive assessments.
Results
Ordering and temporal resolution were related to some cognitive assessments. The difference in some auditory abilities performance of temporal ordering and temporal resolution after the acclimatization period was inversely related to some cognitive assessments.
Conclusion
In the elderly the better the performance on the auditory temporal skills, the better the cognitive test results. However, when analyzing the difference in performance between the auditory abilities before and after the hearing aid fittings, the patients with the worst cognitive performance showed the most improvement. This demonstrates that there is a possibility of neural plasticity stimulation, even in those with cognitive impairment.
Hearing aids; Cognition; Aged; Presbycusis; Auditory perceptual disorders