{"id":24752,"date":"2025-11-11T15:08:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T20:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=24752"},"modified":"2025-11-11T15:08:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T20:08:26","slug":"new-dartmouth-led-study-seeks-to-determine-whether-hearing-loss-speeds-the-progression-of-alzheimers-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2025\/new-dartmouth-led-study-seeks-to-determine-whether-hearing-loss-speeds-the-progression-of-alzheimers-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"New Dartmouth-led Study Seeks to Determine Whether Hearing Loss Speeds the Progression of Alzheimer\u2019s Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine, in collaboration with investigators at the McGill University affiliated Douglas Research Center, Northwestern University, and Creare, LLC, have received a $6 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to study the relationship between auditory function and Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cHearing loss has been considered a risk factor for Alzheimer\u2019s disease, but the underlying mechanism has remained elusive,\u201d says Jay Buckey Jr., MD, a professor of medicine at Geisel and co-principal investigator on the grant project along with Pedro Rosa-Neto, MD, PhD, of the Douglas Research Institute and McGill.<\/p>\n

Hearing depends on two key elements, the ear and the brain. This two-part hearing process is complex and interdependent, Buckey explains. \u201cOne part involves taking a sound (acoustic signal) and turning it into nerve signals, and that\u2019s what the ear does. The other part of the hearing system is taking those nerve signals and making sense out of the sound. That\u2019s what your brain does.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alzheimer\u2019s disease is the leading cause of dementia and is defined by the presence of cerebral amyloid plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. If hearing loss worsens Alzheimer\u2019s disease, these plagues and tangles would develop faster and interventions, like hearing aids, might slow or prevent progression towards dementia.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the hearing complaints for Alzheimer\u2019s patients may originate in the brain from these plaques and tangles, which means hearing aids may not help with cognition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re wondering is, is this relationship between hearing and Alzheimer\u2019s a \u2018bottom up\u2019 process, meaning problems with the ear lead to the progression of Alzheimer\u2019s, or is it more of a \u2018top-down\u2019 process where the Alzheimer\u2019s effect on the brain is influencing hearing ability?\u201d<\/p>\n

To make that determination, the investigators will conduct a longitudinal study, comparing imaging of amyloid plagues and tau tangles and biomarker test results of 70 older adults with mild cognitive impairment (i.e., a precursor to Alzheimer\u2019s disease) to those of a group of other adults that are cognitively unimpaired and a group of young, healthy adults.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be working with colleagues in Montreal who are expert in tau and amyloid PET imaging,\u201d says Christopher Niemczak, PhD, a senior scientist in the Buckey Lab<\/a> (the Space Medicine Innovations Lab), an assistant professor of medicine at Geisel, and co-investigator of the grant project team.<\/p>\n

This will allow the team to follow study participants and look at the rate of progression of these amyloid and tau proteins in their brains across three time points over a five-year period. \u201cThe Montreal team will also be collecting cerebrospinal fluid, blood samples, and performing neurocognitive testing,\u201d says Niemczak. \u201cMeanwhile, we\u2019ll be teaming up with colleagues at Northwestern and Creare, LLC to perform a battery of different hearing tests that will help us assess auditory function in the participants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope the results will show the role that both the ear and the brain play in hearing loss associated with Alzheimer\u2019s disease,\u201d says Buckey. \u201cThe results may also show if tests of hearing ability may be useful for predicting Alzheimer\u2019s disease or tracking its progression.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine, in collaboration with investigators at the McGill University affiliated Douglas Research Center, Northwestern University, and Creare, LLC, have received a $6 million grant from the National Institute on Aging to study the relationship between auditory function and Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":24753,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/Feature-Image-Alzheimers.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-6re","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24755,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24752\/revisions\/24755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}