A way to detect Alzheimer’s early. The key is the way we speak

Alzheimer’s disease irreversibly damages the brain, deprives memory and the ability to think. Its origins often go unnoticed. It is known, however, that it influences the manner of speaking in a sick person, at a very early stage. This was the starting point for British scientists who developed a rapid test for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. It uses … a fairy tale about Cinderella.

1. Alzheimer’s is an irreversible brain disease that gradually destroys neurons, memory, ability to think, and the ability to perform the simplest tasks
2. British scientists noticed that the disease affects speech at a very early stage
3. Using artificial intelligence-based programs, they developed a rapid test for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
4. The most accurate results were obtained by patients who told a fairy tale about Cinderella
5. More current information can be found on the Onet homepage.

Alzheimer’s disease takes a long time to develop “in secret”

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive disease of the brain that gradually destroys neurons (the brain gradually shrinks) and thus memory, thinking abilities and, finally, the ability to perform the simplest of tasks. This can mean that the sick person gets lost, trouble paying bills, problems recognizing friends and loved ones, changes in personality and behavior (e.g. loss of inhibitions, distrust).

Scientists suspect that degenerative changes in the brain may begin 10 years or more before the onset of cognitive decline. It is also known that Alzheimer’s disease is progressive, which means that symptoms develop gradually over many years, leading to more and more problems. There is also no doubt that detecting the symptoms of the disease as soon as possible is the key to slowing it down. But how to do it, since Alzheimer’s disease develops “in secret” for a long time?

1. What is Alzheimer’s Disease?

Researchers from the Neurosciences Research Center at St. George’s University of London found that Alzheimer’s disease affects the way a person communicates (including both speech and written language). Importantly, changes can be detected at a very early stage of the disease. This meant that an appropriate analysis of the manner of speaking could serve as a quick tool to detect the initial stage of the disease and thus enable the fastest possible help.

These findings were the starting point for British specialists to work on a rapid test for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers recorded the participants’ speech as they performed specific tasks. The next step was to assess the symptoms of the disease using the speech analysis software and the machine learning method developed at St. George’s University of London (machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence – the system “learns” as it were by using data and remembering certain patterns).

A quick test to diagnose the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s

50 people participated in the study. Of these, 25 were healthy (controls), 25 struggled with mild Alzheimer’s symptoms, or had mild cognitive impairment (or both). Volunteers were asked to complete five tasks (often used by clinicians). They were to describe a scene from a photo, tell a well-known story, e.g. a fairy tale about Cinderella (this requires integrating a series of characters and events on a timeline), explain how to make a cup of tea (procedural memory), describe a story from pictures presented in a children’s book and give instructions to another person by describing their route through the various landmarks on the map.

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Which of these speech testing methods was the most effective? The most accurate results, indicating early Alzheimer’s or mild cognitive impairment, were given by the task in which the subject told a known story, e.g. the fairy tale about Kpciuszko. After “processing” the results by the aforementioned programs based on artificial intelligence, the disorders were identified with an accuracy of 78%. In the case of the description of the scene from the photo, it was 76 percent. The remaining tests gave results from 74 to 62 percent.

So it turns out that the key role here is not so much the software or the computational model as the specific task to be performed by the patient. “ Our results show that by changing the tasks used to assess Alzheimer’s disease, we have the potential to detect the disease with greater accuracy through speech analysis, ” says study author St. George’s University, Natasha Clarke.

Prophylactically, it is worth ordering and performing a Homocysteine ​​and vitamin D mail order test, because too high levels of homocysteine ​​may affect the development of the disease.

What will the scientists discover?

Natasha Clarke emphasizes that further in-depth research is needed to improve the diagnostic Alzheimer’s test based on speech analysis. However, as he points out: – We hope that in the long run, this technology can be used remotely, for example via smartphone applications (…) So we can make testing easier and then hopefully identify the disease earlier and start treating people faster.

Researchers from the Neurosciences Research Center intend to trace the changes that occurred in the studied patients one year after the tests. This will allow them to learn more about the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Take care of your memory now and drink an infusion of Sage Leaves regularly.

We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time, Dr. Agnieszka Bolikowska – the founder of Linguistics, creator of the 6oMethod® method, will tell us about what slow learning is. How to break the language barrier? How to learn to make mistakes? You will learn about this and other aspects of language learning in today’s episode. Listen!