Presbycusis and the Aging of Eye Movement: Common Attention Mechanisms

Abstract

Presbycusis, physiological age-related hearing loss, is a major health problem because it is the most common cause of hearing impairment, and its impact will grow in the coming years with the aging population. Besides auditory consequences, the literature recently found an association between hearing loss and cognitive decline over the last two decades, emphasizing the importance of the early detection of presbycusis. However, the current hearing tests are not sufficient to detect presbycusis in some cases. Furthermore, the underlying mechanisms of this association are still under discussion, calling for a new field of research on that topic. In that context, this study investigates for the first time the interaction between presbycusis, eye movement latency and Stroop scores for a normal aging population. Hearing abilities, eye movement latency and the Stroop Victoria test were measured for 69 elderly (mean 66.7 ± 8.4) and 30 young (mean 25.3 ± 2.7) participants. The results indicated a significant relationship between saccade latency and speech audiometry in the silence score, independently from age. These promising results suggest common attentional mechanisms between speech processing and saccade latency. The results are discussed regarding the relationship between hearing and cognition, and regarding the perspective of expanding new tools for presbycusis diagnosis.