Amount of Hearing Aid Use Impacts Neural Oscillatory Dynamics Underlying Verbal Working Memory Processing for Children With Hearing Loss.
Elizabeth Heinrichs-Graham, Elizabeth A Walker, Jacob A Eastman and 2 others
PMID 34291759WHAT IT FOUND
Children with mild-to-severe hearing loss whose parents reported more hearing aid use had brain activity during a letter memory task that looked more typical.
Less use was linked to unusual activity, but everyday function was not tested.
Key findings
01During encoding, more hearing aid use was associated with lower activity in the right precentral gyrus and both superior parietal cortices.
02During maintenance, more hearing aid use was associated with lower activity in the right inferior frontal cortex.
03Hearing aid use was not correlated with task accuracy or reaction time.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only 14 children were analysed after 9 of 23 were excluded, so this is a small sample. The study was correlational and did not assign hearing aid use, so it cannot show that more use caused the brain activity pattern. Hearing aid use was parent-reported rather than logged by the devices, and parents may overestimate use. No correlations were found between hearing metrics and task accuracy or reaction time, so the neural differences were not linked to measured performance. The sample included children with bilateral mild-to-severe hearing loss who already used hearing aids, so it does not address children who do not use them or children with other degrees of hearing loss. The task did not vary working memory load, so the study could not test whether harder tasks would reveal behavioral effects.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The article is listed as supported by NIH extramural research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hearing aids improve working memory. The study found associations between reported hearing aid use and brain activity, but it did not manipulate hearing aid use and did not show better task performance in children who wore hearing aids more.