Limited connectedness of spontaneous speech may be a marker of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease

The study evaluated the connectedness of spontaneous speech production in individuals with dementia as a potential predictor severity. Data were derived from baseline sample 143 English Pitt corpus. Dementia severity was assessed via Mini Mental Status Exam, Mattis Rating Scale, and Blessed Scale. Language abilities using verbal fluency picture description tasks. Graph analysis carried out for task computational tool SpeechGraphs to calculate connectedness. Results demonstrated that higher educational attainment, strongly-connected associated better cognitive function. suggest automated language processing approaches, such graph structure analysis, may provide faster ecologically valid method detecting symptoms.