Linguistic Markers of Neurodegenerative Disorders: Implications for Early Diagnosis and Intervention.

Neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), significantly affect cognitive function, particularly language, which is one of the first domains to affect disease progression. This study investigated linguistic marker-specific changes in language patterns as potential tools for early diagnosis of these disorders. Employing a mixed-methods approach allowed us to analyze speech samples from patients with AD and PD, identifying differences in lexical retrieval, syntactic complexity, speech prosody, and fluency. Our findings revealed distinct linguistic profiles for each disorder, suggesting that language analysis could serve as a noninvasive and cost-effective diagnostic tool. These results underscore the need for additional research to refine these markers and to explore their applicability in other neurodegenerative conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]