Speaking in Alzheimer’s Disease, is That an Early Sign? Importance of Changes in Language Abilities in Alzheimer’s Disease

Szatlóczki, Gréta; Hoffmann, Ildikó; Vincze, Veronika; Kálmán, János; Pákáski, Magdolna

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2015.00195

Cited by 175 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 60 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…Brain imaging is commonly utilized as a biomarker for the detection of dementing, neurodegenerative diseases as well as to monitor disease progression, and biomarkers using functional MRI have been regarded useful in the diagnosis and intervention of dementia with substantial implications in delineating neuropathological changes (Gold and Budson, 2008;McKhann et al, 2011;Li et al, 2015;Bayram et al, 2018). Currently, however, there has been limited examination of how brains with neurodegenerative disease operate in relation to language and cognitive deficits (Szatloczki et al, 2015;Li et al, 2017;Kochhann et al, 2018). In particular, nominal research has focused on the neurophysiological correlates of impaired verbal fluency performance in the dementia population, despite the sensitivity, and popularity of verbal fluency tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Paek

Murray

Newman

2020

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Currently there are ∼6 million Americans who are affected by dementia. Verbal fluency tasks have been commonly and frequently utilized to document the disease progression in many forms of dementia. Verb fluency has been found to display substantial potential to detect and monitor the cognitive declines of individuals with dementia who have fronto-striatal involvement. The neural substrates underlying verb fluency task performance, however, have remained unclear so far, especially in individuals with dementia. Therefore, in the current study, brain activation patterns of seven individuals with dementia and nine healthy older adults were investigated using functional MRI. The participants performed in the scanner an overt, subject-paced verb fluency task, representative of fluency tasks used in clinical settings. The brain activation patterns during the verb fluency task were compared between the two groups, and a correlational analysis was conducted to determine the neural correlates of verb fluency performance. The results suggest that compared to healthy older adults, individuals with dementia demonstrated poorer verb fluency performance and showed higher activation in specific neural regions, such as the bilateral frontal lobe. In addition, the correlational analysis revealed that poorer verb fluency performance lead to increased activation in certain cortical and subcortical areas, including left hippocampus and right supramarginal gyrus. The current findings are consistent with previous neurophysiological findings related to semantic (noun) fluency performance in older adults and individuals with dementia and add to the empirical evidence that supports the role of the frontal lobe and hippocampus in verb retrieval and search. Declines in verb fluency performance cannot only be used as a cognitive marker, but also represent neuropathological changes due to the neurodegenerative disease.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Paek

Murray

Newman

2020

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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“…Multiple studies have assessed language functions as early markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) [1]. Consequently, language is now widely accepted to be one of the first cognitive abilities affected by this dementia.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computer‐based evaluation of Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment patients during a picture description task

Hernández-Domínguez

Ratté

Sierra

et al. 2018

Alz & Dem Diag Ass & Dis Mo

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Introduction We present a methodology to automatically evaluate the performance of patients during picture description tasks. Methods Transcriptions and audio recordings of the Cookie Theft picture description task were used. With 25 healthy elderly control (HC) samples and an information coverage measure, we automatically generated a population-specific referent. We then assessed 517 transcriptions (257 Alzheimer's disease [AD], 217 HC, and 43 mild cognitively impaired samples) according to their informativeness and pertinence against this referent. We extracted linguistic and phonetic metrics which previous literature correlated to early-stage AD. We trained two learners to distinguish HCs from cognitively impaired individuals. Results Our measures significantly ( P < .001) correlated with the severity of the cognitive impairment and the Mini–Mental State Examination score. The classification sensitivity was 81% (area under the curve of receiver operating characteristics = 0.79) and 85% (area under the curve of receiver operating characteristics = 0.76) between HCs and AD and between HCs and AD and mild cognitively impaired, respectively. Discussion An automated assessment of a picture description task could assist clinicians in the detection of early signs of cognitive impairment and AD.

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“…annotating turns, or trimming the audio file, in order to prepare it for further computational learning which is not useful for an application in daily clinical practice. Moreover, in order to detect in speech early subtle changes of cognition, it seems crucial to induce a minimum of cognitive effort in a vocal task [15, 20]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fully Automatic Speech-Based Analysis of the Semantic Verbal Fluency Task

König

Linz

Tröger

et al. 2018

Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord

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Background: Semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tests are routinely used in screening for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this task, participants name as many items as possible of a semantic category under a time constraint. Clinicians measure task performance manually by summing the number of correct words and errors. More fine-grained variables add valuable information to clinical assessment, but are time-consuming. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate whether automatic analysis of the SVF could provide these as accurate as manual and thus, support qualitative screening of neurocognitive impairment. Methods: SVF data were collected from 95 older people with MCI (n = 47), Alzheimer’s or related dementias (ADRD; n = 24), and healthy controls (HC; n = 24). All data were annotated manually and automatically with clusters and switches. The obtained metrics were validated using a classifier to distinguish HC, MCI, and ADRD. Results: Automatically extracted clusters and switches were highly correlated (r = 0.9) with manually established values, and performed as well on the classification task separating HC from persons with ADRD (area under curve [AUC] = 0.939) and MCI (AUC = 0.758). Conclusion: The results show that it is possible to automate fine-grained analyses of SVF data for the assessment of cognitive decline.

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Speaking in Alzheimer’s Disease, is That an Early Sign? Importance of Changes in Language Abilities in Alzheimer’s Disease

Cited by 175 publications

References 60 publications

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Neural Correlates of Verb Fluency Performance in Cognitively Healthy Older Adults and Individuals With Dementia: A Pilot fMRI Study

Computer‐based evaluation of Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment patients during a picture description task

Fully Automatic Speech-Based Analysis of the Semantic Verbal Fluency Task

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