Exploring Voice Acoustic Features Associated with Cognitive Status in Korean Speakers: A Preliminary Machine Learning...

Objective: To develop a non-invasive cognitive impairment detection system using speech data analysis, addressing the growing global dementia crisis and enabling accessible early screening through daily health monitoring. Methods: Speech data from 223 Korean patients were collected across eight tasks. Patients were classified based on Korean Mini-Mental State Examination scores. Four machine learning models were tested for three binary classification tasks. Voice acoustic features were extracted and analyzed. Results: The Deep Neural Network model performed best in two classification tasks, with Precision-Recall Area Under the Curve scores of 0.737 for severe vs. no impairment and 0.726 for mild vs. no impairment, while Random Forest achieved 0.715 for severe + mild vs. no impairment. Several acoustic features emerged as potentially important indicators, with DDA shimmer from the /i/ task and stdevF0 from the /puh-tuh-kuh/ task showing consistent patterns across classification tasks. Conclusions: This preliminary study suggests that certain acoustic features may be associated with cognitive status, though demographic factors significantly influence these relationships. Further research with demographically matched populations is needed to validate these findings.