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      Disturbing the rhythm of thought: Speech pausing patterns in schizophrenia, with and without formal thought disorder

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          Abstract

          Everyday speech is produced with an intricate timing pattern and rhythm. Speech units follow each other with short interleaving pauses, which can be either bridged by fillers ( erm, ah) or empty. Through their syntactic positions, pauses connect to the thoughts expressed. We investigated whether disturbances of thought in schizophrenia are manifest in patterns at this level of linguistic organization, whether these are seen in first degree relatives (FDR) and how specific they are to formal thought disorder (FTD). Spontaneous speech from 15 participants without FTD (SZ-FTD), 15 with FTD (SZ+FTD), 15 FDRs and 15 neurotypical controls (NC) was obtained from a comic strip retelling task and rated for pauses subclassified by syntactic position and duration. SZ-FTD produced significantly more unfilled pauses than NC in utterance-initial positions and before embedded clauses. Unfilled pauses occurring within clausal units did not distinguish any groups. SZ-FTD also differed from SZ+FTD in producing significantly more pauses before embedded clauses. SZ+FTD differed from NC and FDR only in producing longer utterance-initial pauses. FDRs produced significantly fewer fillers than NC. Results reveal that the temporal organization of speech is an important window on disturbances of the thought process and how these relate to language.

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          Rank Analysis of Covariance

          Dana Quade (1967)
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            A Speech Recognition-based Solution for the Automatic Detection of Mild Cognitive Impairment from Spontaneous Speech

            Background: Even today the reliable diagnosis of the prodromal stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains a great challenge. Our research focuses on the earliest detectable indicators of cognitive de-cline in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Since the presence of language impairment has been reported even in the mild stage of AD, the aim of this study is to develop a sensitive neuropsychological screening method which is based on the analysis of spontaneous speech production during performing a memory task. In the future, this can form the basis of an Internet-based interactive screening software for the recognition of MCI. Methods: Participants were 38 healthy controls and 48 clinically diagnosed MCI patients. The provoked spontaneous speech by asking the patients to recall the content of 2 short black and white films (one direct, one delayed), and by answering one question. Acoustic parameters (hesitation ratio, speech tempo, length and number of silent and filled pauses, length of utterance) were extracted from the recorded speech sig-nals, first manually (using the Praat software), and then automatically, with an automatic speech recogni-tion (ASR) based tool. First, the extracted parameters were statistically analyzed. Then we applied machine learning algorithms to see whether the MCI and the control group can be discriminated automatically based on the acoustic features. Results: The statistical analysis showed significant differences for most of the acoustic parameters (speech tempo, articulation rate, silent pause, hesitation ratio, length of utterance, pause-per-utterance ratio). The most significant differences between the two groups were found in the speech tempo in the delayed recall task, and in the number of pauses for the question-answering task. The fully automated version of the analysis process – that is, using the ASR-based features in combination with machine learning - was able to separate the two classes with an F1-score of 78.8%. Conclusion: The temporal analysis of spontaneous speech can be exploited in implementing a new, auto-matic detection-based tool for screening MCI for the community.
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              The 'big bang' theory of the origin of psychosis and the faculty of language.

              To achieve a unified concept of the aetiology of psychosis. The nuclear symptoms of "schizophrenia" occur with approximately the same age- and sex-specific incidence in all human populations. No substantive environmental precipitant has been identified, and yet these "illnesses" are associated with deviations in brain structure that are uniform across populations, are established late in development and relate to the capacity for language. No genes have been identified by linkage or association strategies. It is postulated that the variation 1. relates precisely to the genetic mechanism that distinguishes the species Homo sapiens from its precursor. 2. constitutes a class of epigenetic diversity intrinsic to the genetic control of the species characteristic (the "specific mate recognition system" according to the theory of HEH Paterson). 3. reflects the role of the cerebral torque in the neuro-developmental re-organization that enabled the faculty of language. A genetic mechanism involving both the X and the Y chromosomes is suggested by 1) evidence for anomalies of asymmetry of brain structure and function in the sex chromosome aneuploidies, 2) a same sex concordance effect for handedness, 3) sex differences in lateralization, and verbal and spatial ability, and their inter-relationships. These three facts direct attention to the Xq21.3/Yp11.2 homology block that was established by an X to Y duplication 6 million years ago, ie at the time of origin of the hominid lineage. Within this block a gene pair (Protocadherin11X and Y) expressed as two cell surface adhesion molecules at axo-dendritic synapses has been subject to change (16 amino-acid substitutions in the Y, and critically 5 in the X sequence) in the hominid lineage. The X to Y duplication and its subsequent modification (4 deletions and a paracentric inversion) on the Y may have played a central role in hominid speciation with the most recent change (at around 160,000 years) representing the transition to language and modern Homo sapiens (the 'big bang'). The expression of genes within the homologous region is influenced by the extent to which the X and Y chromosomes pair in male meiosis (referred to as MSUC "meiotic suppression of unpaired chromosomes"). This mechanism generates epigenetic diversity relating to the species capacity for language; it is proposed as the basis of the genetic predisposition to psychosis. Language and psychosis have a common origin in the genetic event (the 'big bang') that defined the species.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: SupervisionRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                31 May 2019
                2019
                : 14
                : 5
                : e0217404
                Affiliations
                [1 ] School of Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
                [2 ] Department of Language and Cognition, University College London, London, United Kingdom
                [3 ] Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
                [4 ] Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle, United Kingdom
                [5 ] ICREA (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats), Barcelona, Spain
                [6 ] Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
                [7 ] FIDMAG Germanes Hospitalaries Research Foundation, Benito Menni Hospital, Barcelona, Spain
                Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas, ARGENTINA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5653-1412
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2558-3367
                Article
                PONE-D-18-34437
                10.1371/journal.pone.0217404
                6544238
                31150442
                eee476f6-db39-4f59-a3cc-b13d9b3e26b1
                © 2019 Çokal et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 3 December 2018
                : 11 May 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 1, Pages: 14
                Funding
                Funded by: The Art and Humanities Research Council
                Award ID: AH/L004070/1
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003775, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust;
                Funded by: the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spanish Government
                Award ID: FFI2016-77647-C2-1-P
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002809, Generalitat de Catalunya;
                Award ID: SGR-1265
                Award Recipient :
                This research was supported by the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust (including Research Capability Funding), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/L004070/1 to W.H.), the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Spanish Government (FFI2016-77647-C2-1-P to W.H.), and Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR-1265 to W.H.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Social Sciences
                Linguistics
                Speech
                Social Sciences
                Linguistics
                Grammar
                Syntax
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Mental Health and Psychiatry
                Schizophrenia
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Psychology
                Language
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Language
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Language
                Engineering and Technology
                Signal Processing
                Speech Signal Processing
                Social Sciences
                Linguistics
                Neurolinguistics
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Neurolinguistics
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Mental Health and Psychiatry
                Physical Sciences
                Mathematics
                Probability Theory
                Random Variables
                Covariance
                Custom metadata
                Our data is accessible from the following link: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.zqrf5v6.

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