Voice quality and speech fluency distinguish individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment from Healthy Controls

Charalambos Themistocleous; Marie Eckerström; Dimitrios Kokkinakis

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0236009

Voice quality and speech fluency distinguish individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment from Healthy Controls

PLoS One. 2020 Jul 13;15(7):e0236009. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236009. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Charalambos Themistocleous¹, Marie Eckerström², Dimitrios Kokkinakis^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
² Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
³ Department of Swedish, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
⁴ Center of Ageing and Health-AgeCap, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Abstract

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a syndrome characterized by cognitive decline greater than expected for an individual's age and education level. This study aims to determine whether voice quality and speech fluency distinguish patients with MCI from healthy individuals to improve diagnosis of patients with MCI. We analyzed recordings of the Cookie Theft picture description task produced by 26 patients with MCI and 29 healthy controls from Sweden and calculated measures of voice quality and speech fluency. The results show that patients with MCI differ significantly from HC with respect to acoustic aspects of voice quality, namely H1-A3, cepstral peak prominence, center of gravity, and shimmer; and speech fluency, namely articulation rate and averaged speaking time. The method proposed along with the obtainability of connected speech productions can enable quick and easy analysis of speech fluency and voice quality, providing accessible and objective diagnostic markers of patients with MCI.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Aged
Case-Control Studies
Cognitive Dysfunction / epidemiology*
Dysphonia / physiopathology*
Female
Humans
Incidence
Male
Speech / physiology*
Sweden / epidemiology
Voice Quality / physiology*

Grants and funding

DK, NHS 14-1761:1, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond – The Swedish Foundation for Humanities & Social Sciences, Sweden https://www.rj.se/en. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.