Speech patterns during memory recall relates to early tau burden across adulthood

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Aging
• Speech Analysis

Background:

• Early cognitive decline can be subtle.
• Speech patterns may offer early indicators of cognitive impairment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between speech markers during delayed recall and brain amyloid and tau pathology in cognitively unimpaired adults.
• To explore speech patterns as potential early biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease.

Main Methods:

• 238 cognitively unimpaired adults from the Framingham Heart Study (ages 32-75) underwent amyloid and tau PET imaging.
• Speech patterns during a story memory delayed recall task were analyzed using five speech markers.
• Associations between speech markers, global amyloid status, and regional tau signal were examined.

Main Results:

• Speech markers like utterance time, pauses, speech rate, and unique word percentage correlated with delayed recall scores, though with low shared variance (2%-15%).
• Delayed recall scores did not differ significantly between amyloid-positive (Aβ+) and amyloid-negative (Aβ-) groups.
• Increased tau signal in medial temporal and neocortical regions was associated with longer pauses and slower speech rate.

Conclusions:

• Subtle speech alterations during memory recall may reflect early Alzheimer's disease pathology, specifically tau accumulation.
• Speech analysis shows potential for detecting subtle cognitive changes linked to early tau deposition across adulthood.
• Speech markers may be more sensitive than delayed recall scores alone for identifying early pathological changes.