Lack of Sleep May Affect Hearing Ability

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 30 percent of Americans are getting less than six hours of sleep, and an estimated 50 to 70 million people suffer from sleep disorders.

Various scientific studies show that people who suffer from chronic insomnia or other sleep disorders are prone to potentially serious health consequences. The ability to hear and interpret sounds can also be diminished in sleep-deprived people because prolonged periods of sleeplessness weaken the brain and impact its vital functions.

A team of researchers from the UCSD School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System in San Diego used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to monitor activity in the brains of sleep-deprived people performing simple verbal learning tasks.

During the experiment, the participants were asked to perform various cognitive tasks. The fMRI images reveal both increased and decreased activation of specific regions of the brain in each subject from a rested state through various stages of sleep deprivation.

One of the findings of this study was that the temporal lobe, area of the brain involved in receiving and processing sounds and language interpretation, was activated during verbal learning in rested subjects but not in the ones who hadnt slept.

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