ISCA Archive Odyssey 2026
ISCA Archive Odyssey 2026

Deep learning based analysis of spontaneous speech for diagnostic classification and biomarker prediction in Alzheimer’s disease and primary progressive aphasia

Roger Esteve, Pilar Armas, Marc Casals-Salvador, Miguel A Santos-Santos, Alexandre Bejanin, Javier Hernando

Identifying underlying amyloid-beta ($A\beta$) pathology, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), typically requires invasive or costly procedures. In addition, differential diagnosis between Alzheimer’s disease (AD) phenotypes and Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) variants remains a significant clinical challenge due to overlapping symptomatic profiles. This work evaluates the utility of a deep learning-based spontaneous speech analysis for biomarker prediction in AD and diagnostic classification in PPA. While existing models are biased toward English-language datasets, we benchmark our framework on the IS2021 ADReSSo challenge and extend it to a new Spanish-speaking cohort from the Sant Pau Initiative on Neurodegeneration (SPIN). Our architecture leverages a deep learning system that integrates state-of-the-art encoders for AD detection and audio processing. Our approach integrates acoustic and linguistic features for the automated clinical phenotyping of neurodegenerative diseases.