On Sunday physician Frank Lin described his research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington DC.
“I’m asking how can our peripheral functions, namely hearing, affect our central functions – our brain,” he asked. “Unfortunately this question is completely unknown. This trial has never been done.”
Lin said the prevalence of hearing loss doubles for every decade of life, and that its high frequency has led physicians to dismiss it too often. “The vast majority of dementias in late life are multifactorial,” he said, “but the role of hearing loss has just not been studied.”
He estimated that as much as a 36% of dementia risk is attributable to hearing impairment, though he admitted that theoretical estimate needs testing. When a person needs to strain to listen to “a very garbled message through the ear”, it overtaxes the brain.
This effort, as well as atrophy in underused regions, precipitates changes in brain structure, he continued, eventually causing “cascading effects on brain structure and then brain function”.