Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task
The semantic fluency task is a widely used clinical tool in the diagnostic process of Alzheimer's disease. The task requires efficient mapping of the semantic space to produce as many items as possible within a semantic category. We examined whether healthy volunteers (n = 42) and patients with...
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-02-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.777656/full |
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| author | Aino M. Saranpää Aino M. Saranpää Sasa L. Kivisaari Riitta Salmelin Sabine Krumm Sabine Krumm |
| author_facet | Aino M. Saranpää Aino M. Saranpää Sasa L. Kivisaari Riitta Salmelin Sabine Krumm Sabine Krumm |
| author_sort | Aino M. Saranpää |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The semantic fluency task is a widely used clinical tool in the diagnostic process of Alzheimer's disease. The task requires efficient mapping of the semantic space to produce as many items as possible within a semantic category. We examined whether healthy volunteers (n = 42) and patients with early Alzheimer's disease (24 diagnosed with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment and 18 with early Alzheimer's dementia) take advantage of and travel in the semantic space differently. With focus on the animal fluency task, we sought to emulate the detailed structure of the multidimensional semantic space by utilizing word2vec-method from the natural language processing domain. To render the resulting multidimensional semantic space visually comprehensible, we applied a dimensionality reduction algorithm (t-SNE), which enabled a straightforward division of the semantic space into sub-categories. Moving in semantic space was quantified with the number of items created, sub-categories visited, and switches and returns to these sub-categories. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to predict the diagnostic group with these independent variables. We found that returning to a sub-category provided additional information, besides the number of words produced in the task, to differentiate patients with Alzheimer's dementia from both amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment patients and healthy controls. The results suggest that the frequency of returning to a sub-category may serve as an additional aid for clinicians in diagnosing early Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, our results imply that the combination of word2vec and subsequent t-SNE-visualization may offer a valuable tool for examining the semantic space and its sub-categories. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-24T13:02:58Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f6e49a55e06c4b8cb0a9ed825d0f1eed |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-24T13:02:58Z |
| publishDate | 2022-02-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-f6e49a55e06c4b8cb0a9ed825d0f1eed2022-12-21T16:54:06ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-02-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.777656777656Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency TaskAino M. Saranpää0Aino M. Saranpää1Sasa L. Kivisaari2Riitta Salmelin3Sabine Krumm4Sabine Krumm5Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, FinlandDepartment of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Aalto, FinlandDepartment of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Aalto, FinlandDepartment of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, Aalto, FinlandUniversity Department of Geriatric Medicine FELIX PLATTER, Basel, SwitzerlandFaculty of Medicine, University of Basel, Basel, SwitzerlandThe semantic fluency task is a widely used clinical tool in the diagnostic process of Alzheimer's disease. The task requires efficient mapping of the semantic space to produce as many items as possible within a semantic category. We examined whether healthy volunteers (n = 42) and patients with early Alzheimer's disease (24 diagnosed with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment and 18 with early Alzheimer's dementia) take advantage of and travel in the semantic space differently. With focus on the animal fluency task, we sought to emulate the detailed structure of the multidimensional semantic space by utilizing word2vec-method from the natural language processing domain. To render the resulting multidimensional semantic space visually comprehensible, we applied a dimensionality reduction algorithm (t-SNE), which enabled a straightforward division of the semantic space into sub-categories. Moving in semantic space was quantified with the number of items created, sub-categories visited, and switches and returns to these sub-categories. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to predict the diagnostic group with these independent variables. We found that returning to a sub-category provided additional information, besides the number of words produced in the task, to differentiate patients with Alzheimer's dementia from both amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment patients and healthy controls. The results suggest that the frequency of returning to a sub-category may serve as an additional aid for clinicians in diagnosing early Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, our results imply that the combination of word2vec and subsequent t-SNE-visualization may offer a valuable tool for examining the semantic space and its sub-categories.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.777656/fullsemantic fluencyAlzheimer's diseaseMild Cognitive Impairmentt-SNEverbal fluencysemantic memory |
| spellingShingle | Aino M. Saranpää Aino M. Saranpää Sasa L. Kivisaari Riitta Salmelin Sabine Krumm Sabine Krumm Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task Frontiers in Psychology semantic fluency Alzheimer's disease Mild Cognitive Impairment t-SNE verbal fluency semantic memory |
| title | Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task |
| title_full | Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task |
| title_fullStr | Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task |
| title_full_unstemmed | Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task |
| title_short | Moving in Semantic Space in Prodromal and Very Early Alzheimer's Disease: An Item-Level Characterization of the Semantic Fluency Task |
| title_sort | moving in semantic space in prodromal and very early alzheimer s disease an item level characterization of the semantic fluency task |
| topic | semantic fluency Alzheimer's disease Mild Cognitive Impairment t-SNE verbal fluency semantic memory |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.777656/full |
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