Hearing loss not only affects your personality, cognition, and hearing abilities, but it can also cause stress, irritability as well as frustration. The brain can reorganize and adjust itself when your senses are altered. When you lose the ability to hear, the gray matter atrophy in the auditory areas of the brain is accelerated. Hence, people with untreated hearing loss have lesser gray matter density in the auditory cortex. They also have less brain activity when listening to complex sentences.

Since the auditory area of the brain no longer receives nerve impulses from the sounds that the ear hears, the brain loses its high-functioning ability. When the auditory area in the temporal lobe of the brain begins to degenerate, it creates a ripple effect in the area of the brain responsible for converting auditory information into understandable spoken language (speech).

Hearing aids protect your ability to hear and preserve your perception, cognition, and how your brain processes sound, including understandable spoken language. To maintain a high-functioning brain, hearing should be tested at all ages. It is even more important to schedule a hearing test as we age. Call us at (470) 441-6333 today to schedule an appointment if it’s been over a year since your last hearing test.