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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @04:02PM (1 child)
Yeah the hearing related brain regions will change if there's no input but is that really tied to short term memory?
Age related hearing loss is due to stuff is breaking down faster (e.g. blood flow is not as good, your ear hair cells are dying, etc).
Couldn't your short term memory also stop working properly for similar reasons because stuff is breaking down faster (blood and lymph flow is not as good, brain cells dying, etc).
Do people who became deaf at an early age get dementia earlier or later? https://www.scie.org.uk/dementia/living-with-dementia/sensory-loss/deafness.asp [scie.org.uk]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday May 03 2020, @03:25AM
Actually just more symptoms of age-related thyroid decline (not so much production, as conversion from T4 to T3). Per various studies (which I'll let you look up in JCEM for yourself), half of all cases of dementia are thyroid-related. Hearing loss can be ditto. Fix the damn T3 levels and all these problems go away. Thyroid-related dementia is reversible provided it's treated within the first ten years or so. In my experience, ditto hearing loss.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.