Summary: Researchers identified disease-specific reductions in emotional expression in Lewy body dementia through deep neural network analysis.
This reduced vocal expression is associated with cognitive impairment and atrophy of the brain region, distinguishing it from Alzheimer’s disease. Their study suggests that vocal emotion analysis can help with early detection and appropriate care.
Key facts:
- Lewy body dementia shows marked reductions in vocal emotional expression.
- This reduction is associated with cognitive impairment and atrophy of the insular cortex.
- Deep neural network techniques can distinguish Lewy body dementia from other dementias.
Source: University of Tsukuba
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba and IBM Research identified, for the first time, disease-specific reduction in emotional expression in Lewy body dementia by quantifying vocal expression of emotion using deep neural network techniques.
This reduction in vocal emotional expressions was associated with cognitive impairment and brain area-specific atrophy and may serve as a distinguishing factor for individuals with Lewy body dementia.
Lewy body dementia is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. It progresses more quickly and has a wider range of symptoms compared to other forms of dementia, significantly reducing the quality of life of patients.
However, due to the overlap of symptoms with other diseases such as Alzheimer’s and the limited availability of specialist doctors and facilities, Lewy body dementia is often undiagnosed.
Reduced emotional expression, a typical symptom in dementia patients, affects quality of life – for example, by impairing daily communication and negatively affecting mental health. Despite its importance, no study has objectively and quantitatively investigated emotional expression in individuals with Lewy body dementia.
In their new study published in Alzheimer & Dementia: Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Disease Monitoring, researchers collected audio data while reading stories from individuals with Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and compared it to data from older adults without cognitive impairment (the control group). Vocal emotional expression was quantitatively compared using a deep learning-based emotion recognition model.
The results revealed that the Lewy body dementia group displayed more negative and calmer emotional expressions and less overall expressiveness than the Alzheimer’s disease and control groups. This reduction was associated with cognitive impairment and atrophy of the insular cortex, both typical of individuals with Lewy body dementia.
In addition, automated analysis of vocal emotional expressions demonstrated the potential of vocal emotional expression to distinguish individuals with Lewy body dementia from other groups.
Researchers believe that using deep neural networks to analyze emotional vocal expression may facilitate early detection and appropriate care for Lewy body dementia.
About this news of AI research and madness
Author: Masatomo Kobayashi
Source: University of Tsukuba
Contact: Masatomo Kobayashi – University of Tsukuba
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original research: Open access.
“Vocal expression of emotion discriminates dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer’s disease” by Masatomo Kobayashi et al. Alzheimer & Dementia: Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Disease Monitoring
ABSTRACT
Vocal expression of emotion discriminates dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer’s disease
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the two most common neurodegenerative dementias, both exhibit altered emotional processing. However, how vocal emotional expressions differ and vary between DLB and AD remains uninvestigated.
We collected audio data during story reading from 152 older adults comprising DLB, AD, and cognitively disabled (CU) groups and compared their emotional prosody in terms of valence and arousal dimensions.
Compared to matched participants with AD and CU, DLB patients showed reduced overall emotional expressivity, as well as lower valence (more negative) and lower arousal (more calm), the extent of which was associated with cognitive impairment and insular atrophy. Classification models using vocal features discriminated DLB from AD and CU with an AUC of 0.83 and 0.78, respectively.
Our findings may help discriminate DLB patients from AD and CU individuals, serving as a surrogate marker for clinical and neuropathological changes in DLB.
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Image Source : neurosciencenews.com
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