Seminar: Hearing and vision impairment and mental well-being in older age

Speaker: Dr Piers Dawes, Senior Lecturer in Audiology at the University of Manchester

Abstract

Age-related hearing loss is a marker of risk of cognitive decline and dementia. I will outline possible links between hearing impairment and cognition, including hearing loss as a biomarker for cognitive well-being, the impact of cognitive declines on ‘listening’ and hearing impairment as a causal contributor to cognitive decline and poor quality of life in older age.

I will share recent research including our own work modelling associations between hearing impairment and cognition as well as the impact of hearing interventions on cognition. I will argue that effective prevention, identification and management of hearing problems represents an important opportunity to optimise well-being and quality of life in older age.

Biography

Piers Dawes studied speech and hearing science at Curtin University in Western Australia before moving to the UK to study for a doctorate in experimental psychology at Oxford University. He is currently a senior lecturer in audiology at the University of Manchester. Dr Dawes’s research concerns the impact of hearing impairment on development in childhood and old age, and improving quality of life for adults and children with hearing impairments.

Dr Dawes was a recipient of a US-UK Fulbright award and was awarded the British Society of Audiology’ TS Littler prize for services to audiology. Dr Dawes was the founding chair of the British Society of Audiology’s special interest group for cognition in hearing, which promotes research and raising awareness of new developments on cognitive issues in hearing science, assessment and intervention. Dr Dawes is joint PI for “Ears, Eyes and Mind: The “SENSE-Cog Project” to improve mental well-being for elderly Europeans with sensory impairment”, a €6.2 million EU Horizon 2020 project. Dr Dawes is a lead investigator for the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing. He also heads a consortium of international researchers (including Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Leeds University, Wisconsin University, University College London and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre) in analyzing hearing and tinnitus data from the UK Biobank resource (N=500,000 UK adults).