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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 02 2020, @11:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-did-you-say? dept.

How hearing loss in old age affects the brain:

If your hearing deteriorates in old age, the risk of dementia and cognitive decline increases. So far, it hasn't been clear why. A team of neuroscientists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany examined what happens in the brain when hearing gradually deteriorates: key areas of the brain are reorganized, and this affects memory. The results are published online in the journal "Cerebral Cortex" dated 20 March 2020.

[...] Memory is enabled by a process called synaptic plasticity. In the hippocampus, synaptic plasticity was chronically impaired by progressive hearing loss. The distribution and density of neurotransmitter receptors in sensory and memory regions of the brain also changed constantly. The stronger the hearing impairment, the poorer were both synaptic plasticity and memory ability.

"Our results provide new insights into the putative cause of the relationship between cognitive decline and age-related hearing loss in humans," said Denise Manahan-Vaughan. "We believe that the constant changes in neurotransmitter receptor expression caused by progressive hearing loss create shifting sands at the level of sensory information processing that prevent the hippocampus from working effectively," she adds.

Denise Manahan-Vaughan, Olena Shchyglo, Mirko Feldmann, Daniela Beckmann. Hippocampal Synaptic Plasticity, Spatial Memory, and Neurotransmitter Receptor Expression Are Profoundly Altered by Gradual Loss of Hearing Ability. Cerebral Cortex, 2020; DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa061


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 02 2020, @12:47PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday May 02 2020, @12:47PM (#989438)

    So far, it hasn't been clear why.

    Like all other brain functions, if you cut off the inputs the processor atrophies. If you lose your hearing and don't replace that stream of input with another stream of input, the downstream (linguistic processing, cognitive?) processes are going to stop getting exercise and slowly pack it in.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @01:47PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @01:47PM (#989452)

    > Like all other brain functions, ...

    Like all other functions, ...
    FTFY

    Stop using some muscle, it atrophies. Stop walking, leg bones lose bone mass, etc. Maybe not so surprising that brains respond the same way?

    There are some exceptions--if ol' Eth stopped using his kidneys to process all that alcohol, they might last longer?

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:26PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:26PM (#989479) Homepage

      The atrophy theory is good, but there may also be another negative effect from the mechanism trying to "fill in the blanks" of sensory deprivation, which could result in misinterpreted sentences at best and schizophrenia-like symptoms at worst.

      My liver and kidneys are made of steel. But fortunately, drinking is a lot less fun during a pandemic so my days are spent running and camping and explaining to the public that Gavin Newsom is taking Chinese money to help destroy the social fabric of California. If he doesn't capitulate and fast, we're gonna see another Gray Davis-style recall along with the Dems losing a great deal of their political clout here, especially along with the increasing unpopularity of immigration.