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This Technology Could Predict Your Odds of Alzheimer’s Disease

Artificial intelligence promises to revolutionize many aspects of life. It might even have the ability to predict who will get dementia.

An AI computer program that analyzes speech patterns in voice recordings might be able to detect which patients with mild cognitive impairment will progress to Alzheimer’s disease within a period of six years, according to a recent study by Boston University researchers.

The findings were published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, a medical journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

As part of the study, the researchers looked at neuropsychological test interviews of 166 participants between the ages of 63 and 97. Ninety of these participants had progressed from mild cognitive impairment to dementia over a half-dozen years, and 76 people had mild cognitive impairment that remained stable.

The researchers looked at speech patterns recorded during exams. To do so, they designed an AI-based computer program that uses machine learning, a subset of AI that allows computer scientists to teach the program to analyze data.

The researchers focused on the content spoken in the interviews — including the words used and how people structured them — rather than analyzing acoustic qualities, such as how speakers enunciated words or how fast or slow they spoke.

When combined with basic demographic information, using the AI-based method for speech recognition helped the researchers predict with 78.5% accuracy who would progress from mild cognitive impairment to dementia over a six-year period.

The researchers note that some aspects of the AI-based technology still need to improve. However, they believe that it could be used as a remote screening tool that would help health care providers better identify who is likely to progress to Alzheimer’s disease.

The technology holds the promise of helping health care providers diagnose Alzheimer’s years in advance without the need for expensive lab tests and imaging, the researchers say. In addition, the low cost of the AI-based method — and the fact that it can be used remotely — means many more people could potentially be screened for Alzheimer’s.

In a summary of the findings, Ioannis (Yannis) Paschalidis, director of the Boston University Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, says:

“We hope, as everyone does, that there will be more and more Alzheimer’s treatments made available. If you can predict what will happen, you have more of an opportunity and time window to intervene with drugs, and at least try to maintain the stability of the condition and prevent the transition to more severe forms of dementia.”

Other researchers have found that analyzing speech patterns in telephone conversations can help reveal who might have early to moderate Alzheimer’s.

For more news about Alzheimer’s disease, check out:

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