Hearing loss is associated with gray matter differences in older adults at risk for and with Alzheimer’s disease

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Using data from the COMPASS-ND study we investigated associations between hearing loss and hippocampal volume as well as cortical thickness in older adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). SCD participants with greater pure-tone HL exhibited lower hippocampal volume, but more cortical thickness in the left superior temporal gyrus and right pars opercularis. Greater speech-in-noise reception thresholds were associated with lower cortical thickness bilaterally across much of the cortex in AD. The AD group also showed a trend towards worse speech-in-noise thresholds compared to the SCD group. Highlights In SCD, greater pure-tone hearing loss was associated with lower right hippocampal volume. Pure-tone hearing loss was not associated with brain atrophy in MCI or AD. Individuals with AD exhibited a trend towards poorer speech-in-noise (SiN) thresholds than SCD. In AD, greater atrophy across large portions of the cortex was associated with greater SiN thresholds.