Hualou Liang, Ph.D.

There’s one deceptively simple early sign of Alzheimer’s not often talked about: a subtle change in speech patterns.

Increased hesitation. Grammatical mistakes. Forgetting the meaning of a word, or mispronouncing common words—or favorite phrases and idioms—that used to flow naturally.

Scientists have long thought to decode this linguistic degeneration as an early indicator of Alzheimer’s. One idea is to use natural language software as a “guide” of sorts that hunts down unusual use of language… Continue reading.

The artificial intelligence algorithms behind the chatbot program ChatGPT — which has drawn attention for its ability to generate humanlike written responses to some of the most creative queries — might one day be able to help doctors detect Alzheimer’s Disease in its early stages. Research from Drexel University’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems recently demonstrated that OpenAI’s GPT-3 program can identify clues from spontaneous speech that are 80% accurate in predicting the early stages of dementia.

Reported in the journal PLOS Digital Health, the Drexel study is the latest in a series of efforts to show the effectiveness of natural language processing programs for early prediction of Alzheimer’s – leveraging current research suggesting that language impairment can be an early indicator of neurodegenerative disorders… Continue reading.