Linguistic Abnormalities in Isolated Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder
Martin Šubert1, Michal Šimek1, Michal Novotný1
1Department of Circuit Theory, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.
Summary
Patients with isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) show early language impairments. These linguistic changes may predict synucleinopathy development and can be detected using automated analysis, aiding early diagnosis.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
- Neurology
Background:
- Synucleinopathies often present with language deficits.
- The presence of prodromal language impairment in isolated rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) is not well understood.
- Investigating linguistic abnormalities in iRBD may reveal early biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease conversion.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if linguistic abnormalities in iRBD patients indicate prodromal synucleinopathy.
- To assess the influence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) on these linguistic features.
- To evaluate the efficacy of automated analysis for detecting language changes.
Main Methods:
- 139 Czech participants (iRBD, Parkinson's disease (PD), and controls) were analyzed.
- Spontaneous discourse and story-tale narrative tasks were linguistically annotated.
- Three linguistic features were quantified and compared between manual and automated analysis.
Main Results:
- iRBD patients exhibited reduced content density and lexical richness compared to controls.
- Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in both iRBD and PD groups was associated with poorer lexical richness.
- Automated analysis showed strong correlation with manual annotation, with story-tale narrative effectively identifying MCI (AUC up to 0.81).
Conclusions:
- Linguistic features in iRBD patients may serve as reliable biomarkers for prodromal neurodegeneration.
- Automated analysis of language offers a feasible method for early cognitive decline detection.
- These findings support the development of future therapeutic strategies for synucleinopathies.
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