Speech production in aging and dementia: The umbrella project

Our group has since long pursued to understand the processes underlying speech changes in aging. An important phenomenon to address at this respect is the slowing of word generation vis-à-vis the decline in memory capacity or semantic deterioration. We conduct a careful analysis of the content, accuracy and timing of speech to better understand changes in speech production of healthy older adults and older patients at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We use neuropsychological verbal tasks for this purpose, and we measure psychomotor elements on its execution, including reaction times, word articulation and voice intensity. Through this approach, we have addressed the effects of task difficulty, neural correlates of word generation as well as moderating variables of brain functioning during verbal execution. More recently, we have applied time course analyses and machine learning techniques to semantic errors characterizing the initial stages of AD.