Association of Tinnitus With Speech Recognition and Executive Functions in Older Adults.
Nick Sommerhalder, Zbyněk Bureš, Oliver Profant and 3 others
PMID 41232079WHAT IT FOUND
Older adults with tinnitus struggled more than controls to understand speech in noise and fragmented speech, and showed poorer executive function.
Basic hearing and simple auditory processing were normal. This suggests the difficulty is central, not just peripheral.
Key findings
01Participants with tinnitus performed more poorly than controls on speech recognition in noise and on the gated speech task.
02Tinnitus participants showed deficits in executive functions, specifically interference control, emotional interference, cognitive flexibility, and verbal working memory.
03There were no significant differences between groups in suprathreshold auditory perception tasks like gap detection or modulation.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove tinnitus causes these deficits; pre-existing cognitive differences might predispose people to tinnitus. The tinnitus group had slightly worse high-frequency hearing than controls, which could influence speech-in-noise performance despite statistical controls. Participants had mild tinnitus distress on average, so findings may not apply to those with severe tinnitus disorder. The sample was culturally and linguistically homogeneous (Swiss-German speakers), limiting generalizability.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Zürcher Stiftung für das Hören and the UZH Competence Center Language and Speech. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that tinnitus causes hearing loss or that these patients have peripheral auditory deficits. The study found normal basic hearing and suprathreshold processing; the deficits were in central auditory processing and cognition.