Hearing loss is considered the greatest potentially modifiable risk factor for dementia, with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) the leading cause of dementia. But the auditory system may be impaired beyond what can be detected in clinical measures of hearing loss, possibly at early stages of the disease, before the onset of dementia. We are identifying whether there are specific deficits in sound neural encoding and perception in the pre-dementia stage of AD (mild cognitive impairment; MCI) using a combination of behavioral methods and electroencephalography (EEG).

The way humans hear changes with age. Some changes in perception are related to the degradation of sound encoding in the inner ear. But other changes are related to differences in central auditory system processing with age. Our work aims to disentangle these factors to better understand how the auditory system works across the adult lifespan in people with and without sensorineural hearing loss.