NCTalks at AAIC 2017: Kim Mueller on speech decline as a marker for MCI


Whilst at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London (AAIC; UK, 16–20 July 2017), we sat down with Kim Mueller, a researcher from the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute (University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA), whose abstract had been highlighted by the Association as one of note.
The work presented at AAIC investigated whether early memory decline correlates with changes in everyday speech. The results showed that subtle changes in speech – e.g., the use of short sentences, more pronouns, more frequent pauses and filler words – increased in line with development of early mild cognitive impairment, and therefore, further down the line, could be used as a marker for Alzheimer’s disease.

In this podcast, Kim discusses the study and its implications, including how these findings could one day be translated into new – potentially mobile – technology for at-home screening and disease monitoring.

Want to see more? Listen to our NCTalks podcast with Julie Williams (Cardiff University) or Alzheimer’s susceptibility genes, and read all the news from AAIC here.