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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Neurocognitive Aging and Behavior
Volume 16 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2024.1444330
This article is part of the Research Topic Lifestyle and Healthy Aging to Prevent Cognitive Decline and Dementia View all 8 articles
COGNITIVE PROCESSING SPEED IMPROVEMENT AFTER COCHLEAR IMPLANTATION
Provisionally accepted- 1 Hôpitaux Universitaires Pitié Salpêtrière, Paris, France
- 2 Intitut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, Ile-de-France, France
- 3 Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France
- 4 Hôpital Universitaire Charles Foix, Ivry-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, France
- 5 Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital, Piacenza, Italy
- 6 University Clinic of Navarra, Pamplona, Navarre, Spain
- 7 Hôpital Purpan, Toulouse, France
- 8 Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular-Materno Infantil, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
- 9 Bnai Zion Medical Center, The Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Haifa, Israel
- 10 Rabin Medical Center, Petah-Tikva, Israel
- 11 University Hospital of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
- 12 Other, Toulouse, France
- 13 Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
- 14 Greenham Research Consulting Ltd., Swindon, United Kingdom
Untreated hearing loss has an effect on cognition. It is hypothesised that the additional processing required to compensate for the sensory loss affects the cognitive resources available for other tasks and that this could be mitigated by a hearing device.The impact on cognition of cochlear implants (CIs) was tested in 100 subjects, ≥ 60 years old, with bilateral moderately-severe to profound post linguistic deafness using hearing aids. Data was compared pre and 12 and 18 months after cochlear implantation for the speech spatial qualities questionnaire, Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Trail making test B (TMTB) and digit symbol coding (DSC) from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale version IV and finally the timed up and go test (TUG). Subjects were divided into young old (60-64), middle old (65-75) and old old (75+) groups. Cognitive test scores and times were standardized according to available normative data.Hearing significantly improved pre-to post-operatively across all age groups. There was no change post-implant in outcomes for TMTB, TUG or MMSE tests. Age-corrected values were within normal expectations for all age groups for the TUG and MMSE. However, DSC scores and TMTB times were worse than normal. There was a significant increase in DSC scores between baseline and 12-months for 60-to 64-year-olds (t[153] = 2.608, p=0.027), which remained at 18 months (t[153] = 2.663, p=0.023).The improved attention and processing speed in the youngest age group may be a consequence of reallocation of cognitive resources away from auditory processing due to greatly improved hearing. The oldest age group of participants had cognition scores closest to normal values, suggesting that only the most able older seniors tend to come forward for a CI.Severe to profoundly deaf individuals with hearing aids or cochlear implants were still poorer than age-equivalent normally hearing individuals with respect to cognitive flexibility, attention, working memory, processing speed and visuoperceptual functions.Due to a lack of data for the TUG, TMTB and DSC in the literature for hearing impaired individuals, the results reported here provide an important set of reference data for use in future research.
Keywords: Cognition, Elderly, cochlear implant, Healthy Ageing, decline
Received: 05 Jun 2024; Accepted: 27 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Mosnier, Belmin, Cuda, Manrique Huarte, Marx, Ramos-macias, Khnifes, Hilly, Bovo, James, Graham and Greenham. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Paula Greenham, Greenham Research Consulting Ltd., Swindon, United Kingdom
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