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Analysis of temporal speech impairments in patients with Dementia with Lewy Bodies
Davaajargal, Anar ; Kováč, Daniel (referee) ; Novotný, Kryštof (advisor)
Dementia with Lewy bodies is the second most common neurodegenerative disease of the dementia type. Progressive degradation of motor and cognitive abilities and behavioral changes have a significant impact on the quality of life of the affected person and those around them. Early diagnosis of the disease is therefore crucial for setting up adequate treatment. Due to similarities with other diseases, it may be overlooked or mistaken for another disease in the early stages. There is a lack of extensive research detailing the speech defects specific for this disease, which through acoustic analysis could be used to make a paraclinical diagnosis in a cost-effective, non-invasive, yet efficient manner. The aim of this paper is to survey available knowledge and methods, select and implement appropriate parameters targeting tempo and pauses, and then evaluate the effectiveness of the methods used to discriminate patients from healthy controls. The evaluation was based on Mann-Whitney U test and descriptive statistics. The best results were obtained for parameters MWPM of longer words, median pause length, occurrence of repeated words and NSR, all considering the task with monologue, which generally showed a greater discriminative power than the task that involved reading a text. The analysis suggests temporal parameters suitable for describing speech disorders in the selected disease. At the same time, new custom metrics are introduced and tested in this paper.
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