Classifying Parkinson’s Disease Patients With Syntactic and Socio-emotional Verbal Measures

Abstract

Frontostriatal disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), are characterized by progressive disruption of cortico-subcortical dopaminergic loops involved in diverse higher-order domains, including language. Indeed, syntactic and emotional language tasks have emerged as potential biomarkers of frontostriatal disturbances. However, relevant studies and models have typically considered these linguistic dimensions in isolation, overlooking the potential advantages of targeting multidimensional markers. Here, we examined whether patient classification can be improved through the joint assessment of both dimensions using sentential stimuli. We evaluated 31 early PD patients and 24 healthy controls via two syntactic measures (functional-role assignment, parsing of long-distance dependencies) and a verbal task tapping social emotions (envy, Schadenfreude) and compared their classification accuracy when analyzed in isolation and in combination. Complementarily, we replicated our approach to discriminate between patients on and off medication. Results showed that specific measures of each dimension were selectively impaired in PD. In particular, joint analysis of outcomes in functional-role assignment and Schadenfreude improved the classification accuracy of patients and controls, irrespective of their overall cognitive and affective state. These results suggest that multidimensional linguistic assessments may better capture the complexity and multi-functional impact of frontostriatal disruptions, highlighting their potential contributions in the ongoing quest for sensitive markers of PD.

Socioeconomic status impacts cognitive and socioemotional processes in healthy ageing

“…As previously reported 48 , 51 – 54 , envy- and Schadenfreude -eliciting situations of the task consistently produce higher ‘displeasure’ and ‘pleasure’ ratings than neutral scenarios. Furthermore, a validation study confirmed that said situations were specific in evoking envy and Schadenfreude compared to other socio-moral emotions such as pride and guilt 50 .…”

“…Furthermore, a validation study confirmed that said situations were specific in evoking envy and Schadenfreude compared to other socio-moral emotions such as pride and guilt 50 . The task has been employed in samples of older adults from Latin America 50 , 51 , successfully evoking envy and Schadenfreude 50 , 51 , and capturing its canonical neuroanatomical basis 50 (i.e., the anterior cingulate cortex for envy 34 and the striatum and posterior regions for Schadenfreude 34 , 55 ).…”

Ecological meanings: A consensus paper on individual differences and contextual influences in embodied language

“…The use of naturalistic, contextual and ecological approaches to embodied language (Birba, Beltrán, et al, 2020;Birba, Vitale, et al, 2020;García et al, 2020;Trevisan et al, 2017) seem to be a powerful tool to identify selective deficits in neurodegeneration and other brain diseases (Baez et al, 2020;Calvo et al, 2019;Díaz-Rivera et al, 2022;Eyigoz et al, 2020;García et al, 2018;Moguilner et al, 2021;Suárez-García et al, 2021). Interoceptive deficits and their relation with contextual modulation is also an innovative embodied approach across brain diseases (Abrevaya et al, 2020;Birba et al, 2022;de la Fuente et al, 2019;Fittipaldi et al, 2020;García-Cordero et al, 2016;Gonzalez Campo et al, 2020;Salamone et al, 2021;Yoris et al, 2020).…”

Cognitive Determinants of Dysarthria in Parkinson's Disease: An Automated Machine Learning Approach

“…Finally, patients were tested in the on phase of medication, creating maximally stringent conditions for our hypotheses. Still, dopamine bioavailability can modulate speech outcomes (as captured via automated tools) 23 and other communicative skills 111,112 in PD. Some of the variables targeted herein could also be influenced by medication status, inviting further research.…”