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Faculty of Medical Sciences

Speech parameters are potential biomarkers for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorder

Hessing, H. (Hugo) (2021) Speech parameters are potential biomarkers for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia spectrum disorder. thesis, Medicine.

Full text available on request.

Abstract

Purpose Biomarkers for bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) would be useful for diagnostics and follow-up, but are currently lacking. Since speech can be altered in patients with BD and SSD, it could contain potential biomarkers for these disorders. This study aimed to discover which speech factors may serve as such a biomarker. Method Speech analyses were performed on the speech of 23 patients with BD, 10 patients with SSD, 23 healthy controls matched to BD patients and 10 healthy controls matched to SSD patients. Speech parameters of patients were compared with their psychiatric symptom scores and with speech parameters of healthy controls. Results Depressive symptom severity correlated negatively with speech rate and positively with loudness variation. Negative psychotic symptom severity and general psychiatric symptom severity both correlated negatively with the mean voiced segment length. Both patient groups had a lower speech and articulation rate, a shorter mean voiced segment length, a longer mean unvoiced segment length and more variation in pitch, but less variation in loudness than controls. Additionally, SSD patients had more jitter and shimmer (measures of decreased voice quality) in their speech than the controls. Conclusions Speech rate and the mean voiced segment length are particularly promising as biomarkers for BD and SSD respectively because of their correlations with measures of psychiatric symptom severity and the differences between patients and healthy controls. Additionally, the mean voiced segment length might be an objective measure of general psychiatric symptom severity in these patients. Studies on speech analysis represent a promising avenue towards the development of biomarkers for BD and SSD.

Item Type: Thesis (UNSPECIFIED)
Supervisor name: Sommer, I. E. C. and Borkent, J.
Faculty: Medical Sciences
Date Deposited: 23 Dec 2021 14:23
Last Modified: 23 Dec 2021 14:23
URI: https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/2898

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