Speech-Based Dementia Detection

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Overview

The field studies how changes in word choice, sentence structure, pauses, fluency, and vocal acoustics can signal dementia or milder cognitive impairment. Methods range from interpretable linguistic features and acoustic models to automatic speech recognition, self-supervised speech representations, large language models, and systems that combine audio with transcripts or other clinical data. Researchers evaluate these approaches on conversational and task-based speech benchmarks, including ADReSS, DementiaBank, and newer multilingual or clinical corpora. Strong benchmark results remain difficult to carry across datasets, languages, and patient groups, so fairness, clinical validation, faithful explanations, and robustness to recording differences are central open challenges.

Latest papers

CardsList

44 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 50% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Unifying Acoustic Features and Text with Multimodal LLMs for Neurodegenerative Screening

    Jun 10, 2026Qingfeng Zhang, Yuanxiong Guo, Yanmin GongAlzheimer's DiseaseMultimodal Large Language Models

    Dept. of Information Systems and Cybersecurity The University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX, USA · School of Engineering Medicine Texas A&M University Houston, TX, USA

  2. Multilingual Detection of Alzheimer's Disease from Speech: A Cross-Linguistic Transfer Learning Approach

    Jun 4, 2026Nadine Yasser Abdelhalim, Emmanuel Akinrintoyo, Nicole SalomonsSpeech-Based Dementia DetectionSpeech Processing

    Department of Computing, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

  3. Forgotten Words: Benchmarking NeoBERT for Dementia Detection in Low-Resource Conversational Filipino and English Speech

    May 25, 2026Rez Samantha Z. Floresca, Edric Castel C. Hao, Hannah Grachiella Buñales +3Multilingual Language Model EvaluationSpeech-Based Dementia Detection

    Ateneo de Manila Senior High School · Analog Devices, Inc.

  4. A Multimodal Framework for Dementia Detection via Linguistic and Acoustic Representation Learning

    May 25, 2026Loukas Ilias, Dimitris AskounisSpeech-Based Dementia DetectionSpeech Processing

    Decision Support Systems Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 15780 Athens, Greece

  5. Can Large Language Models Imitate Human Speech for Clinical Assessment? LLM-Driven Data Augmentation for Cognitive Score Prediction

    May 15, 2026Si-Belkacem Yamine Ketir, Lenard Paulo Tamayo, Shohei Hisada +3Class-Imbalanced LearningSynthetic Data Augmentation

    Télécom SudParis, France · Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

  6. PROCESS-2: A Benchmark Speech Corpus for Early Cognitive Impairment Detection

    May 14, 2026Madhurananda Pahar, Caitlin H. Illingworth, Bahman Mirheidari +7Speech-Based Dementia DetectionSpeech Processing

    School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 4DP, UK · Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2HQ, UK

  7. ASR-Agnostic Multimodal Spectrotemporal Modeling for Early Dementia Detection

    Apr 29, 2026Chukwuemeka Ugwu, Oluwafemi Richard OyelekeSpeech-Based Dementia DetectionSpeech Processing

  8. Multilingual Cognitive Impairment Detection in the Era of Foundation Models

    Apr 8, 2026Damar Hoogland, Boshko Koloski, Jaya Caporusso +5Speech-Based Dementia DetectionClinical Language Model Evaluation

    Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia · Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School, Ljubljana, Slovenia · Institute of Synergetics and Psychotherapy Research, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria +2

  9. HASS: Hierarchical Simulation of Logopenic Aphasic Speech for Scalable PPA Detection

    Mar 25, 2026Harrison Li, Kevin Wang, Cheol Jun Cho +13Speech-Based Dementia DetectionClinical Speech Processing

    UC Berkeley, USA · UCSF, USA · Zhejiang University, China +2

  10. Impact of automatic speech recognition quality on Alzheimer's disease detection from spontaneous speech: a reproducible benchmark study with lexical modeling and statistical validation

    Mar 18, 2026Himadri S SamantaSpeech-Based Dementia DetectionAlzheimer's Disease Classification

    Independent Researcher, Austin, Texas, USA

  11. Bias and Fairness in Self-Supervised Acoustic Representations for Cognitive Impairment Detection

    Mar 3, 2026Kashaf Gulzar, Korbinian Riedhammer, Elmar Nöth +2Speech-Based Dementia DetectionClinical Speech Processing

    Zentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (KIZ), Technische Hochschule Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany · Pattern Recognition Lab, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany

  12. MINT: Multimodal Imaging-to-Speech Knowledge Transfer for Early Alzheimer's Screening

    Feb 27, 2026Vrushank Ahire, Yogesh Kumar, Anouck Girard +1Cross-Modal Knowledge DistillationAlzheimer's Disease

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, India · Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Florida, USA

  13. Breaking Data Efficiency Dilemma: A Federated and Augmented Learning Framework For Alzheimer's Disease Detection via Speech

    Feb 16, 2026Xiao Wei, Bin Wen, Yuqin Lin +5Speech-Based Dementia DetectionData-Efficient Learning

    Tianjin Key Laboratory of Cognitive Computing and Application, College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China · Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China · College of Computer and Data Science, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China +1

  14. False positive bias in AI-powered speech-based cognitive screening for multilingual English speakers in the UK

    Feb 13, 2026Madhurananda Pahar, Caitlin Illingworth, Dorota Braun +4Speech-Based Dementia Detection

    School of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 4DP, UK · Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2HQ, UK · NIHR Devices for Dignity HTC, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield, S10 2JF, UK