Fully-automated analysis of voice recordings–from neuropsychological tests–found to help differentiate normal cognition from dementia and mild cognitive impairment

Voice Record­ings Spot Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (Med­Page Today): A machine-learn­ing mod­el iden­ti­fied mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia from dig­i­tal voice record­ings of neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, an ear­ly study showed. Among 1,084 peo­ple in the Fram­ing­ham Heart Study whose tests were record­ed, the aver­age area under the curve (AUC) reached 92.6% for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing nor­mal cog­ni­tion from demen­tia, 88.0% for…

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Using Reddit as a population-level “mental health tracker” during the COVID pandemic

Using machine learn­ing to track the pandemic’s impact on men­tal health (MIT News): Deal­ing with a glob­al pan­dem­ic has tak­en a toll on the men­tal health of mil­lions of peo­ple. A team of MIT and Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty researchers has shown that they can mea­sure those effects by ana­lyz­ing the lan­guage that peo­ple use to express their…

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