Speech-In-Noise Perception in Alzheimer's Disease and Primary Progressive Aphasia

Understanding speech despite background noise is essential for everyday communication, but makes heavy neural processing demands. It is therefore potentially vulnerable to neurodegenerative diseases, particularly those led by communication deficits (primary progressive aphasia). However, how speech-in-noise perception is affected in these diseases is poorly understood.

Audiologists evaluating patients with Alzheimer's disease or primary progressive aphasia should anticipate substantially degraded speech-in-noise performance that likely reflects neurodegenerative central auditory processing decline, not solely peripheral hearing loss — though no specific protocol change is yet evidenced.

As audiology increasingly intersects with dementia care, understanding how neurodegeneration degrades central auditory processing is essential for accurate differential diagnosis and appropriate hearing rehabilitation planning.

1. 01Both Alzheimer's disease and primary progressive aphasia (PPA) patients showed impaired speech-in-noise perception.
2. 02Deficits likely reflect central (brain-level) auditory processing breakdown, not just ear-level hearing loss.
3. 03PPA is a neurodegenerative syndrome primarily affecting language — its auditory processing profile is underexplored.
4. 04Findings support including speech-in-noise tests in neurodegenerative disease audiological assessments.
5. 05Study adds to growing evidence linking dementia and auditory processing vulnerability.

PMID

42446245

DOI

10.1111/ene.70701.

Journal

European Journal of Neurology

Publication type

research_article

Evidence level

3

Population

Patients with Alzheimer's disease and patients with primary progressive aphasia

Intervention

Speech-in-noise perception testing in neurodegenerative disease populations

Comparator

Presumably healthy controls (not explicitly stated)