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Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

nih.gov

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Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#51

Post by gpt5 »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #45
gpt5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference, but not that dramatic. You can try it on yourself here - https://playback.fm/audio-reaction-time

There's a lot more between the actions there image to display, mouse to computer that have nothing to do with internal meatbag reactions. Especially when we're already measuring in milliseconds.

I'm referring to the paper cited in the linked site, which quotes about 50ms of difference in reaction time between auditory and visual, not 200ms like stated in the comment above.

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#52

Post by gloryjulio »

dblohm7 wrote: post #7

My spouse is an audiologist, and yes, she has told me (and of course her patients) this is very much a "use it or lose it" type of deal.

My understanding about human beings is always use it or lose it. So you have to keep exercising in all aspects

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#54

Post by skybrian »

TylerE wrote: post #50
waterhouse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RCTs are also observational The key phrase is "purely observational". Now, occasionally you end up with a "natural experiment" in which some accident has effectively done the randomization for you—specifically, where the mechanism that puts people in the treatment group vs the control group is something you can be very confident has no other causal interactions. This was a good example: https://twitter.com/PGeldset…

And it'll also include some number of alcoholics in recovery who are currently consuming no alcohol, but who's bodies have hard years on them, and you'd expect to do worse than overall population average in outcomes.

Yes, and any number of other things you hadn't thought of. The beauty of randomization is that, whatever it is, it will put some of those people in each group.

But even with a random variable, this still only gives you an average result for the group. And the more diverse the group is, the less likely that it's useful in predicting whether it works for you.

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#55

Post by mbirth »

blendo wrote: post #53

A bit off topic, but do Apple Airpod Pro provide benefits to those with mild hearing loss? I find Transparency mode with Conversation Awareness helps me hear words more clearly among groups of people, even though my hearing is fine.

Download the app “Mimi Hearing Test”. It allows you to do a quick test using your AirPods. And the results you can upload in your iPhone’s accessibility settings. So the phone will increase frequencies you don’t hear well. You can also set a general amplification.

So, yes, I’d very much think AirPods can be of benefit here.

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#56

Post by skybrian »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #41
waterhouse wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm advocating that people do studies with randomized interventions—an approach that is capable of proving causation—and not being satisfied with purely observational studies that look at correlations, which are often hopelessly confounded and can't distinguish between "X causes Y" and "Z causes both X and Y". I was pleasantly surprised to find that this study was of the first type rather than the second.

I completely agree that randomized intervention studies have enormous value when compared to observational studies. In this example, it would be particularly hard to establish a causative relationship that said "hearing aids inhibit dementia" or "hearing loss causes dementia" if instead all you had was a population, some of whom used hearing aids, and some of whom had varying levels of hearing abilities, and some of…

I largely agree, except that choosing a denominator of 8 billion is really dubious. The number of people for whom this study will result in them getting a hearing aid when they otherwise wouldn't is unknown, but unlikely to be nearly that high.

You can't actually do that math. Or rather, you can but the inputs to your spreadsheet are whatever you made up.

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#57

Post by skybrian »

blendo wrote: post #53

A bit off topic, but do Apple Airpod Pro provide benefits to those with mild hearing loss? I find Transparency mode with Conversation Awareness helps me hear words more clearly among groups of people, even though my hearing is fine.

I'm sure it would help, but in my experience, I don't find them a replacement for hearing aids.

I have tried this a bit with first-generation Airpod Pros. Wearing them for a long time is annoying, in part due to battery life. But they are much better than hearing aids for recorded music, so I swap between my hearing aids and airpods depending on what I'm doing.

They are optimized for different things.

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#59

Post by rpozarickij »

mbirth wrote: post #55
blendo wrote: post #53

A bit off topic, but do Apple Airpod Pro provide benefits to those with mild hearing loss? I find Transparency mode with Conversation Awareness helps me hear words more clearly among groups of people, even though my hearing is fine.

Download the app “Mimi Hearing Test”. It allows you to do a quick test using your AirPods. And the results you can upload in your iPhone’s accessibility settings. So the phone will increase frequencies you don’t hear well. You can also set a general amplification. So, yes, I’d very much think AirPods can be of benefit here.

> increase frequencies you don’t hear well

Wouldn't that make you less sensitive to those frequencies and thus speed up the worsening of the hearing issues?

Re: Hearing aids slow cognitive decline in people at high risk

#60

Post by LeifCarrotson »

skybrian wrote: post #56
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree that randomized intervention studies have enormous value when compared to observational studies. In this example, it would be particularly hard to establish a causative relationship that said "hearing aids inhibit dementia" or "hearing loss causes dementia" if instead all you had was a population, some of whom used hearing aids, and some of whom had varying levels of hearing abilities, and some of…

I largely agree, except that choosing a denominator of 8 billion is really dubious. The number of people for whom this study will result in them getting a hearing aid when they otherwise wouldn't is unknown, but unlikely to be nearly that high. You can't actually do that math. Or rather, you can but the inputs to your spreadsheet are whatever you made up.

Attempting to do the math is better than the alternative of going with your gut. The numerator is also an overestimate, not everyone suffered excessive cognitive decline.

If this was a critical decision (like it was for the authors of the study, unlike it is for the authors of Internet comments) you can work for better inputs.

Most importantly, though, we're trying to understand if that fraction is greater than one or less than one. There's a number that might be 8 billion or might be a tenth or a hundredth of that in the denominator, and a number that's on the order of 100 - or maybe 10x that, or maybe 1/10th that. But it doesn't matter, because it's not close, the ratio is still a million to one.

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