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Background:Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia detectable through gait analysis. Curve walking, which demands greater cognitive and motor skills, may be more sensitive in MCI detection than straight walking. However, few studies have compared gait performance in older adults with and without MCI in these conditions. Objective:To compare the capability of curve and straight walking tests for the detection of MCI among older adults. Methods:We employed a Kinect v.2 camera to record the gait of 55 older adults (30 healthy controls, 25 with MCI) during single-task straight and curve walking tests. We examined 50 gait markers and conducted statistical analyses to compare groups and conditions. The trail was approved with protocol No. IR.SEMUMS.REC.1398.237 by the ethics committee of Semnan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Results:Older adults with MCI exhibited more compromised gait performance, particularly during curve walking. Curve walking outperformed straight walking in MCI detection, with several gait markers showing significant differences between healthy controls and MCI patients. These markers encompass average velocity, cadence, temporal markers (e.g., gait cycle subphase durations), spatial markers (e.g., foot position changes during gait subphases), and spatiotemporal markers (e.g., step and stride velocities). Conclusions:Our study suggests curve walking as a more informative and challenging test for MCI detection among older adults, facilitating early diagnosis using non-invasive, cost-effective tools like the Kinect v.2 camera, complementing cognitive assessments in early diagnosis, and tracking MCI progression to dementia.
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The Impact of Pause and Filler Word Encoding on Dementia Detection with Contrastive Learning
Dementia is primarily caused by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It affects millions worldwide, making detection and monitoring crucial. This study focuses on the detection of dementia from speech transcripts of controls and dementia groups. We propose encoding in-text pauses and filler words (e.g., “uh” and “um”) in text-based language models and thoroughly evaluating their impact on performance (e.g., accuracy). Additionally, we suggest using contrastive learning to improve performance in a multi-task framework. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approaches in enhancing the model’s performance, achieving 87% accuracy and an 86% f1-score. Compared to the state of the art, our approach has similar performance despite having significantly fewer parameters. This highlights the importance of pause and filler word encoding on the detection of dementia.
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- PAR ID:
- 10560979
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Applied Sciences
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 19
- ISSN:
- 2076-3417
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 8879
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/app14198879
