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Testing Central Auditory Processing May Reveal Preclinical Alzheimer Disease
Performance on certain behavioral central auditory processing assessments differentiated between people with mild cognitive impairment and healthy, age-matched control subjects, suggesting such tests could identify older adults at risk of Alzheimer disease. Researchers published findings from their systematic review and meta-analysis in the journal Cells.
“Without effective treatment in the foreseeable future, it is essential to focus on modifiable risk factors and early intervention,” explained an Australian research team in the study introduction. “Central auditory processing is impaired in people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and its preclinical stages and may manifest many years before clinical diagnosis.”
The systematic review focused on behavioral central auditory processing tests in people with Alzheimer disease and its preclinical stages. Thirteen studies met full inclusion criteria and were included in the qualitative synthesis; 7 were included in meta-analyses of temporal auditory processing tests (auditory fusion test and adaptive tests of temporal response), dichotic tests (dichotic digits test and dichotic sentence identification test), and monaural low-redundancy speech tests (synthetic sentence identification-ipsilateral competing message test, time-compressed speech test, and speech perception in noise test).
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Compared with healthy control subjects, people with mild cognitive impairment performed significantly worse within channel adaptive tests of temporal response, time-compressed speech, dichotic digits, dichotic sentence identification, speech in noise, and synthetic sentence identification-ipsilateral competing message tests, according to the findings.
Meanwhile, people with Alzheimer’s disease performed significantly worse in dichotic digits, dichotic sentence identification, and synthetic sentence identification-ipsilateral competing message tests than healthy controls.
The investigation was unable to determine whether specific tests could differentiate between Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment due to the small number of studies of central auditory processing in people with Alzheimer disease—likely because such tests are difficult to perform in the population.
Nevertheless, “[t]his analysis indicated that mild cognitive impairment participants could be differentiated from healthy aged-matched controls on the basis of their performance on some of the behavioral central auditory processing assessments,” researchers wrote. “In conclusion, a subjective central auditory processing test battery can be used as a hearing biomarker/clinical tool to early identify older adults at risk of cognitive impairment in clinical settings.”
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