Study Science

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a public health crisis that afflicts more than 6 million Americans and has cost the nation approximately $321 billion in 2022. Ample evidence suggests that AD preventions or cures are more likely to be beneficial at the earliest stages of disease, when an individual has minimal to no symptoms and has some biomarkers indicating early signs of AD.

Evidence also suggests that cognitive changes may precede noticeable impairment due to AD by years, if not decades. The cognitive tests currently used to detect cognitive decline are more effective for people with dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). They are less likely to be appropriate for studies of preclinical AD when the goal is to detect and monitor subtle cognitive decline in individuals who are experiencing minimal to no symptoms. New tests that capture these subtle changes in early AD are critical to improve early identification of cognitive decline and to monitor the response of treatments in clinical trials.

Subtle declines in cognition, including language, are associated with preclinical AD biomarkers, but evidence for speech assessment of these early symptoms is lacking. Connected speech is a measure that’s collected by open-ended or picture description tasks. Through these measures connected speech detects more functional or typical communication allowing it to carry a higher validity for day-to-day life than most commonly used neuropsychological tests.

Digital technology, including recorded speech, has the capability of providing a wealth of information about early changes to cognition and communication associated with developing Alzheimer’s disease pathology, with the potential for highly accessible, yet low-burden measurement. The TalkTracker app analyzes changes to participants connected speech measures to help determine these factors that are associated with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.