Connected speech markers of amyloid burden in primary progressive aphasia.

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Positron emission tomography (PET) amyloid imaging has become an important part of the diagnostic workup for patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and uncertain underlying pathology.

Connected speech is a linguistic term that is quite a synonym of "conversation". Analysis of connected speech shows sound changes affecting linguistic units.

Here, scientists employ a semi-automated analysis of connected speech (CS) with a twofold objective.

  • First, to determine if quantitative connected speech features can help select primary progressive aphasia (PPA) patients with a higher probability of a positive PET amyloid imaging result.
  • Second, to examine the relevant group differences from a clinical perspective.

117 connected speech samples from a well-characterised cohort of PPA patients who underwent PET amyloid imaging were collected. Expert consensus established PET amyloid status for each patient, and 40% of the sample was amyloid positive.

The scientists found that leave-one-out cross-validation yields 77% classification accuracy (sensitivity: 74%, specificity: 79%).

Their results seem to confirm the potential of connected speech analysis as a screening tool. Discriminant connected speech features from lexical, syntactic, pragmatic, and semantic domains are discussed.

Read the original article on Pubmed



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