How the way you talk can reveal how quickly you are aging

How the way you talk can reveal how quickly you are aging A younger sounding voice is thought to be faster with less pauses, according to researchers - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in The sound of your voice can reveal how quickly and how well you are aging, a study has suggested. Scientists have developed a computer tool called a "speech clock” that can estimate a person’s age by listening to how long they pause for, their pitch and vocabulary. Younger-sounding speech is thought to be faster, fluent and have shorter pauses in comparison to speech that is associated with an older person. When the tool was tested some voices appeared older than the participants actual age. These participants were also more likely to show signs of biological aging, cognitive decline and dementia, suggesting the tool could be used to screen patients for dementia. “Our voice appears to contain much more information about aging than we previously recognised,” said Agustin Ibanez, Professor in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute and School of Medicine, Trinity, and senior author of the study. “It captures both the passage of chronological time and signals coming from cognition, the brain, systemic biology, and even our accumulated social environment. This raises the possibility that something as simple and accessible as speech clocks, maybe combined with biomarkers, could eventually complement much more expensive measures of aging.” For the study, published in the journal Science Advances, voices of 2,928 Spanish-speaking participants from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, including healthy adults and people with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and different forms of frontotemporal dementia were analysed. The computer tool calculated a “speech age gap”, which reveals the difference between someone's chronological age and their biological age suggested by their voice. In instances where a participant's speech age was older than their chronological age, they also tended to perform worse on memory, thinking and planning tests even if the test did not involve speaking. Bigger speech age gaps were also linked to biological differences, such as older-looking brains on scans and DNA changes. Participants with Alzheimer’s had a bigger speech age gap, which was linked to higher levels of p-tau217, a protein in the blood which is one of the hallmarks of the disease. Voices that sounded older than a person’s true age were also associated with social disadvantages, less education, financial hardship and food insecurity. Many current measures of biological aging require MRI scanners, blood samples, molecular assays, or specialised clinical assessments. Speech, in contrast, can be recorded remotely, repeatedly, non-invasively, and at very low cost. This could be particularly important in countries and communities where advanced diagnostic technologies are difficult to access. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments