April 14, 2023 — Using artificial intelligence to analyze a recording of a person’s voice could cut the time of an Alzheimer’s screening from hours to less than 10 minutes.
Currently, screenings for Alzheimer’s disease may involve brain scans and analysis of brain fluid taken from the spine via a procedure called a lumbar puncture. Researchers from the Universities of Texas and Georgia compared the results of these standard tests to their new AI-based voice screening.
The experimental technique identifies subtle changes in a person’s voice that could indicate cognitive problems and Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms appear. The results of the study were released earlier this year by the Alzheimer’s Association in Disease diagnosis, assessment and surveillance.
“If confirmed by larger studies, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to study voice recordings could provide primary care providers with an easy-to-perform screening tool for those at risk” , said researcher Ihab Hajjar, MD, of the University. of southwestern Texas, in a statement. “Earlier diagnoses would give patients and families more time to plan for the future and give clinicians greater flexibility to recommend promising lifestyle interventions.”
The study included 206 people, just under half of whom had mild cognitive impairment, while the rest had no cognitive impairment. The people were all under 50 and 51% of them were African American. They all participated in testing for the study at Emory University in Atlanta.
The study’s voice recording task involved participants spending 1-2 minutes describing an artwork.
Using artificial intelligence to analyze speech changes can identify signs of early disease that are either extremely laborious to detect with current methods or not even detectable by the human ear, Hajjar said.
“This new testing method has worked well for detecting people with mild cognitive impairment and more specifically for identifying patients with signs of Alzheimer’s disease – even when it cannot be easily detected using ‘standard cognitive assessments,’ he said.
Mild cognitive impairment, which some people in the study had, means that a person has problems with language or memory severe enough to be noticed by the affected person and their friends and family. However, the problems do not prevent them from carrying out daily tasks.
Not everyone who has mild cognitive impairment then develops Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder that Mayo Clinic described as causing brain shrinkage. Alzheimer’s disease affects 5.8 million people age 65 and older in the United States.