Flower, flora, fauna: can novel metrics of verbal fluency performance help detect individuals at risk of future cognitive decline?

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Project background Over 850,000 people are living with a dementia diagnosis in the UK. Whilst treatments to halt or reverse dementia-causing neurodegenerative disease are limited, the ability to detect individuals at risk of future cognitive impairment will help advance preventative strategies.This studentship asks if the patterns of words produced on a simple verbal fluency task (i.e., name as many animals as you can in 60-seconds...) can identify individuals vulnerable to future cognitive decline. We will use natural language processing techniques to characterise subtle differences in the semantic, language and executive strategies to produce words. The project will complete research with healthy adults differentiated by whether they carry a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's Disease or not, and with adults referred to NHS memory assessment services with cognitive complaints. Project aims and objectivesThe project will develop an innovative, theoretically driven collection of outcomes for characterising verbal fluency task performance using easy-to-automate, computational techniques. You will subsequently test if these measures are sensitive to the effects of carrying an APOE 4 genetic risk variant for dementia, and if this sensitivity changes with age. There will be research within an NHS memory assessment service to explore if the verbal fluency measures you have established can help aid diagnosis and 1-year prognosis in a real-world healthcare setting.