How language flows when movements don?t: An automated analysis of spontaneous discourse in Parkinson?s disease

GARCIA, ADOLFO; CARRILLO, FACUNDO; OROZCO-ARROYAVE, JUAN; TRUJILLO, NATALIA; VARGAS BONILLA, JESUS; FITTIPALDI, SOL; NOTH, ELMAR; ADOLFI, FEDERICO; SIGMAN, MARIANO; FERNÁNDEZ SLEZAK, DIEGO; IBAÑEZ, AGUSTIN; CECCHI, GUILLERMO

BRAIN AND LANGUAGE

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 vol. 162 p. 19 - 28

0093-934X

To assess the impact of Parkinson?s disease (PD) on spontaneous discourse, we conducted computerizedanalyses of brief monologues produced by 51 patients and 50 controls. We explored differences insemantic fields (via latent semantic analysis), grammatical choices (using part-of-speech tagging), andword-level repetitions (with graph embedding tools). Although overall output was quantitatively similarbetween groups, patients relied less heavily on action-related concepts and used more subordinate structures.Also, a classification tool operating on grammatical patterns identified monologues as pertaining topatients or controls with 75% accuracy. Finally, while the incidence of dysfluent word repetitions wassimilar between groups, it allowed inferring the patients? level of motor impairment with 77% accuracy.Our results highlight the relevance of studying naturalistic discourse features to tap the integrity of neural(and, particularly, motor) networks, beyond the possibilities of standard token-level instruments.