Hearing Loss & Memory Loss: A Direct Correlation?

Those with hearing loss also appear to have a greater risk for cognitive impairment. Dr. Frank Lin, leading researcher in this area, contributes "cognitive load" as one of the possible leading factors. His theory is the idea that as hearing loss occurs, greater resources are dedicated to auditory processing to the detriment of other cognitive process, or cognitive load. "If your inner ears are no longer able to encode sounds very accurately and you're constantly getting garbled messages or constantly having to expend more resources to help with hearing, that probably comes at the expense of systems such as thinking and memory and cognition," said Dr. Lin.

You can read more about his research here.

The correlation between heaing and cognitive decline are very compelling, however research is still very new and there are a lot of questions that still need to be explored.