HEARING ASSOCIATES
Cognitive Sceening
Detecting Cognitive Function Decline with Cognitive Screening
A ten year study carried out by Dr. Frank Lin established that there is an up to five-fold increase in dementia for individuals with mild, medium, or severe hearing loss.
A 25 yearlong French study in the Journals of Gerontology demonstrated an increase in the cases of disabilities, dementia, and depression among elderly men as hearing loss continued to increase, supporting the research of Dr. Lin.
How hearing loss connects to increasing your risk for developing dementia and early cognitive decline is complex, but the link is the cause of concern for our doctors of audiology. At Hearing Associates, in efforts to help our patients and their families live a richer, more independent lifestyle through better hearing, we take things a step further by making use of advanced diagnostic technology that measures how hearing loss is impacting your cognitive health.
We utilize a breakthrough technology known as Cognivue Screening in order to enhance the level of custom hearing care we are able to provide.
Four Ways Hearing Loss and Cognitive Decline Are Linked
1. Common Risk Factors
Hearing loss often accompanies other negative health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes, which also tend to place individuals with those conditions at greater risk for decreased cognitive health. The link between the two is probably the narrowing of blood vessels, common in these conditions, which also occurs in the network of small blood vessels that feed the cochlea that sometimes contribute to hearing loss.
2. Mental Overload
The task of conducting, analyzing, and processing sound by central auditory pathways becomes more difficult when receiving muted sound signals from the auditory system, leading to mental overload. To make up for the fact that mental resources are spread too thin, other parts of the brain, especially those involved in thinking and memory, pitch in to help, redirecting thinking and memory resources to process hearing rather than cognitive functions.
3. Structural Changes
Muscular atrophy, or shrinking, occurs when a muscle sees a limited or decreased amount of activity. This occurs in your brain when there are weak or absent sound signals to process, changing the brain’s structural capacity.
4. Social Isolation
University of British Columbia researchers demonstrated an increase in social isolation by a factor of 52% for every 10-decibel drop in hearing capacity. This occurs due to the stress and discomfort involved with struggling to keep up with conversations in noisy settings. Social isolation makes a significant contribution to cognitive decline.
What Is Cognivue Screening and How Does It Work?
Cognivue Screening is a specialized tool used by Hearing Associates Inc in order to help our patients identify and manage cognitive decline. It serves as an advanced level tool for measuring cognitive decline, developing the right hearing care treatment plan and provides insight helpful in the process of selecting the hearing aid technology.
This form of cognitive testing utilizes a personalized, consistent, and reliable assessment of your overall brain health, establishing a baseline score against which you and your doctor can monitor and detect changes as they develop, utilize new interventions when levels decline, and measure the success of interventions already in place.
Some of the features of Cognivue screening include:
– Quick assessments (about 10 minutes)
– Non-invasive
– Interactive and intuitive
– Self-administered
– Immediate results after testing
– Easy to understand results
– Secure and confidential
A special characteristic of Cognivue testing is its capacity to adapt the test according to the patient’s performance using unique software algorithms that help improve testing accuracy by eliminating testing variability.
Schedule a Cognitive Screening
Hearing care begins with a comprehensive assessment. To properly treat hearing loss, we have to know what we’re up against. If you suspect that you or a loved one might be experiencing a hearing loss or cognitive changes, there is no better time than today to take the first step toward better hearing, greater independence, and a more rewarding lifestyle. Use our form to schedule an assessment and get started on your journey to better hearing.