Hearing Loss: Does it affect cognition?

If you are above the age of forty, chances are that your hearing has been affected. The effect may be minor, but chances that you can’t hear a few frequencies.

But can hearing loss affect cognition?

I did my test for this article. My results showed that my hearing though, normal, could not detect certain frequencies. But am I losing my mind?

The short answer is no, but.

When your brain receives signals, it needs to process the information. To do this, it converts the signal into electrical pulses, which are then processed. Using memory it makes sense of what you heard.

But what if the signal was not very clear? There were sounds or even words that you could not hear clearly? Your brain would then have to divert attention from elsewhere to make sense of what you were hearing.

You might experience it as someone responding more slowly or taking time to process things. Someone I know mentioned that if your hearing capacity drops, you should use a hearing aid to reduce the drop in cognition.

While poor hearing may come across as a lowering of capacity or, dare I say it, lower intelligence, it most decidedly is not so.

I researched the phenomenon to understand how much of your brain capacity would be diverted if, say; you lost fifty percent of your hearing capacity. There is no definitive research that can tell how much of your brain’s capacity is diverted to compensate.

When ever your brain experiences a loss of capacity, other parts of the brain fill in and compensate. You could even argue that your brain is being pushed to develop a new capacity.

Being slow to respond and a drop in cognition are not the same thing.

So, no, you do not need a hearing aid. Do get your hearing tested though.

A slight drop in hearing capacity is normal and you can live a perfectly normal life with this reduced capacity.

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