AI has taken the world by storm. We are seeing AI becoming a part of our daily lives so conveniently. AI in the medical space is also something that is being explored and now an AI-driven tool has helped identify disease-specific reductions in emotional expressivity in Lewy body dementia (LBD) through deep neural network analysis. This helps in early detection and better care.
The study was a joint effort by the University of Tsukuba and IBM Research. It was revealed that reduced vocal expression is linked to cognitive impairment and brain region atrophy. This differentiates LBD from Alzheimer’s disease.
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Voice data was collected during story-reading sessions from individuals with LBD, Alzheimer’s disease, and cognitively unimpaired older adults. Then, an earning-based emotion recognition model was used to quantitatively compare vocal emotional expressions among these groups.
The key findings from the study show that Lewy body dementia, which is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative dementia after Alzheimer’s, has distinct reductions in vocal emotional expressivity. This is specifically linked to cognitive impairment and insular cortex atrophy. The use of deep neural network techniques enables differentiation between LBD and other dementias.
As per the study, those with Lewy body dementia show more negative and calmer emotions with less overall expressiveness compared to those with Alzheimer’s disease and the control group. This reduction in expressiveness was directly associated with cognitive impairment and insular cortex atrophy. These are typical characteristics of LBD.
The study was eventually published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.
There’s a lot to be explored with AI in the medical space. Do you think that AI will substantially help the medical sector?
