A recent study revealed that changes in a person's voice may carry clues about their age and how quickly they are aging, and may also be linked to brain health and the likelihood of developing cognitive decline and dementia.
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An international team of researchers analyzed the voices of 2,928 people aged between 18 and 88 from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia, including healthy individuals and those with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia.
Researchers used machine learning technology to analyze hundreds of speech-related characteristics, including speaking speed, tone of voice, emotional expression, vocabulary, linguistic accuracy, and the number of words needed to express an idea. Based on this data, they developed a tool called the "Speech Clock," which estimates a person's age based on their voice characteristics.
The researchers compared the age estimated by the tool with the actual age of each participant, a phenomenon known as the "verbal age gap." The results showed that people whose voices sounded older than their actual age were more likely to experience memory and cognitive problems, and larger gaps were associated with a higher risk of developing dementia.
The researchers found that the voices of older people tended to be slower, less high-pitched, and less expressive of emotion, while voices that sounded younger were associated with faster speech and the ability to convey ideas with fewer words.
Voice changes with age are linked to natural bodily changes, such as the loss of some elasticity in the vocal cords and a decrease in lung capacity and airflow during speech. Some of these changes typically begin in one's fifties, but they vary from person to person.
In the study, 1,504 participants were healthy, 1,069 had Alzheimer's disease, while the rest suffered from other forms of dementia or cognitive impairment.
The researchers found that individuals with a larger gap between their estimated and chronological age were more likely to experience impaired memory, cognitive function, and executive functions such as planning, concentration, and task organization. In individuals with Alzheimer's disease, larger gaps were associated with elevated levels of phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217) in the blood, a biomarker linked to the disease.
Dr. Agustin Ibanez, the study's lead author, said that the voice appears to carry more information about aging than previously thought, and may reflect signals related to the brain, cognitive abilities, and general biological state.
Researchers believe that speech analysis could become a simple and low-cost tool in the future to help assess certain indicators of aging and brain health, particularly in areas lacking advanced medical resources. However, they emphasized that the "speech clock" is not currently a diagnostic tool for Alzheimer's or dementia, and that further research is needed to confirm its accuracy across different population groups before its widespread use.
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