Natural Language Processing analysis of connected speech in Alzheimer disease and related disorders

Language and speech are fundamental for communication between people. Language and speech skills are determined by the extent to which we see and manifest ourselves towards our neighbors and how we participate in society. Studies of well-known individuals who have died of Alzheimer's disease, such as Ronald Reagan or Gerard Reve, have shown that Alzheimer's has altered changes in their lyrics and speeches even before the disease symptoms and diagnosis can be established. In this study, we use the latest language and speech analysis techniques to investigate, in a large group of cognitively normal study participants, computational methods based on language and speech analysis that can distinguish early onset Alzheimer's disease in the brain. We also investigate how these task and speech changes relate to the nerve cell loss and spread of the pathological tau protein.