Brielle C. Stark, PhD | Indiana University Bloomington; Sharlene Newman, PhD; Yanyu Xiong, PhD
Competition Sponsor: National Academy of Medicine
Awardee Year: 2024
Identifying aging individuals in cognitive decline’s prodromal stages is critical for implementing effective intervention to prevent or slow decline. However, prodromal changes currently cannot be reliably identified by standardized batteries of cognition. Presently, researchers and clinical practitioners must rely on self-report ratings of cognitive status, but these are not easily validated. This gap in diagnostic proficiency underscores the need to identify reliable objective behavioral markers that corroborate subjective ratings of cognitive decline. In this study, researchers in the Midwest and South will collaborate to collect objective data from a large and diverse aging population. This is imperative because research suggests that rural-living populations, and individuals from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, are underserved by the healthcare system and have an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment. Innovatively, the project will leverage speech and language data to extract objective metrics that can be acquired without intensive labor and significant expense in real settings, and are robust for differences in dialect and literacy. The aim is to validate whether the use of these behavioral markers drawn from speech and language testing can sensitively detect individuals who self-report as experiencing cognitive decline. The study will motivate longitudinal, prospective research evaluating the extent to which behavioral data serve as biomarkers of early cognitive change that then trigger early intervention.