Southampton researchers breaking barriers to understand the onset of Alzheimer’s

The condition affects more than half a million people in the UK each year.

Anna Barney, professor of biomedical acoustic engineering and her team are taking part in pioneering research investigating whether speech could be used as a reliable indicator for the progressive onset of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Professor Barney said: “Speaking puts a lot of strain on the brain.

“We have to work quite hard to speak and especially to take part in conversations, so we can tell how well the brain is working from looking at how people speak.”

In collaboration with professor Peter Garrard based at St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, the team studied conversations in groups of patients shortly after diagnosis.

By recording their conversations, team first identified what are known as ‘conversational overlaps’.

These are points in conversations where people talk over each other, for example, by trying to interject or confirming what the other person is saying while they are speaking using words, noises or laughter.

By studying the conversations Prof. Barney found that people with an Alzheimer’s diagnosis overlapped a lot more than those without.

Prof. Barney was one of a number of speakers at a Living with Dementia conference at the University of Southampton in partnership with Alzheimer’s Research UK.