Vocabulary test could spot signs of dementia

Researchers believe they have devised a test that could be used to spot dementia after analysing a short conversation with a patient.

‘As families and friends get together over Christmas there is an opportunity to spot signs that may have been missed’

One of Agatha Christie’s last novels was called Elephants Can Remember. By that stage in her life though, even if elephants could, Christie, 81, could not.

Her writing showed a sharply reduced vocabulary, her sentences repeated common phrases and she used far more “indefinite words” such as “something” and “anything”.

Scientists think they know why: she had Alzheimer’s. Now, using similar techniques to those applied to her novels, researchers believe they have devised a test that could be used to spot dementia in all of us after analysing a short conversation with a patient.

Rosemary Varley, from University College London, said that they conducted the research because “if something is going wrong elsewhere, we quite likely see changes in language”.

Her colleague Vitor Zimmerer said their analysis showed that it would be surprisingly hard for people to spot these changes because initially it manifests not as strange language, but as more normal language.

“People don’t make more mistakes but they start using more and more common language forms. The language sounds fine — you use common combinations that are completely normal. It is hard to detect in an intuitive way,” he said.

By looking at 100 people, with and without dementia, he and Professor Varley say that they have trained a computer to spot the signs. It looks at one, two and three-word combinations, such as “don’t” preceding “know”. “Those words are magnetically attracted to each other,” Professor Varley said. “In cognitive decline the system can’t resist the pull of the common stuff.”

By recording and transcribing 400-word conversations with people, Dr Zimmerer said that their system appeared to be able to diagnose with about 90 per cent accuracy.

James Pickett, the head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, which funded the research into the language tool, said that the work was part of a push to find better ways of spotting the condition.

“Too many people don’t get a timely diagnosis of dementia. On top of this, the tools we have to test and confirm a diagnosis are expensive and time-consuming, like brain scans and lumbar punctures,” he said.

“We need cheaper, portable, easy to use and more sensitive ways to diagnose dementia. If it’s shown to work on a larger scale, this exciting technology could tick all those boxes — and take place in primary care, making a diagnosis and treatment much more accessible.”

Britain’s NHS has called for people to look out for the signs of dementia in others over Christmas.

“Dementia is an insidious disease that develops slowly and may go unnoticed in people we see every day,” Alistair Burns, NHS England’s national clinical director for dementia, said.

“As families and friends get together over Christmas there is an opportunity to spot signs that may have been missed.”

The Times