Speech clocks decode dementia phenotypes, social exposome, and biological aging

Biological aging clocks offer estimations of aging and dementia, yet scalability is limited. We introduce a large-scale, cross-national speech clock derived from 2928 individuals across five Latin American countries, spanning healthy controls (HCs), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and non-language/language-dominant frontotemporal dementia (nldFTD/ldFTD). Multimodal acoustic and linguistic features were trained with supervised models to estimate chronological age, generating speech age gaps (SAGs) as cross-sectional markers of deviations from chronological age, with positive values interpreted as relatively older-appearing speech profiles. SAGs differentiated diagnostic groups (HCs < patient groups, with AD < nldFTD < ldFTD). This pattern was associated with clinical/cognitive domains. SAGs correlated with phosphorylated tau (p-Tau217) in AD and social exposome in HCs and AD. Brain clocks (structural/functional/combined) were associated with SAG in AD, nldFTD, and ldFTD. Epigenetic age correlated with SAGs in HCs and AD across Hannum, Retroclock, and OMICmAge, whereas ldFTD associations were limited to Retroclock and OMICmAge. These results indicate that SAGs capture cross-sectional multilevel aging-related variation and may offer a scalable, culturally adaptable, low-cost biomarker candidate for research in underrepresented global settings.

Authors

Institutions

Publication Details

Journal
Science Advances
Published
2026-09-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aef9864
Primary Topic
Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
Controls
|||
ALL TIME
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
article

Speech clocks decode dementia phenotypes, social exposome, and biological aging

Irene B. Meier, Nilton Custodio, Carlos Coronel‐Oliveros, Stefanie Danielle Piña‐Escudero et al.
Science Advances
Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
article

Speech clocks decode dementia phenotypes, social exposome, and biological aging

Irene B. Meier, Nilton Custodio, Carlos Coronel‐Oliveros, Stefanie Danielle Piña‐Escudero, Leonel Tadao Takada, Pablo Reyes, Agustín M. Ibáñez, Maria Eugenia Godoy, Slachevsky Andrea, Damián Dellavale, Lizeth Katherine Pedraza, Sandra Báez, Paulina Orellana, Guido Rocatti, C. Jarne, Lucía Amoruso, Sebastián Moguilner, Juan F. Cardona, Kun Hu, María Isabel Behrens, Hernando A Santamaría‐García, David Fernando Aguillon, Claudia A. Duran-Aniotz, Maria Luisa Gorno‐Tempini, Maira Okada de Oliveira, Matías Caccia, Pavel Prado, Agustina Legaz, Bruce L. Miller, Marcelo Adrián Maito, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Hernán Hernandez, Vaibhav A. Narayan, Josephine Cruzat, Jhosmary Cuadros, Gonzalo Nicolás Pérez, Ariel Caviedes, Adolfo M. García, Franco Javier Ferrante, José Alberto Ávila‐Funes, Juan Pablo Espinoza‐Puelles, Lina Maria Zapata‐Restrepo, Alejandro Sosa Welford, Nicolás Pelella, Javier Palma-Espinosa, Jeremías Inchauspe, Liset Gonzalez, Joaquin Migeot, Martín Bruno, Fabio Mattiussi, Bárbara Bruna, Michael Corley
article en

Abstract

Biological aging clocks offer estimations of aging and dementia, yet scalability is limited. We introduce a large-scale, cross-national speech clock derived from 2928 individuals across five Latin American countries, spanning healthy controls (HCs), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and non-language/language-dominant frontotemporal dementia (nldFTD/ldFTD). Multimodal acoustic and linguistic features were trained with supervised models to estimate chronological age, generating speech age gaps (SAGs) as cross-sectional markers of deviations from chronological age, with positive values interpreted as relatively older-appearing speech profiles. SAGs differentiated diagnostic groups (HCs < patient groups, with AD < nldFTD < ldFTD). This pattern was associated with clinical/cognitive domains. SAGs correlated with phosphorylated tau (p-Tau217) in AD and social exposome in HCs and AD. Brain clocks (structural/functional/combined) were associated with SAG in AD, nldFTD, and ldFTD. Epigenetic age correlated with SAGs in HCs and AD across Hannum, Retroclock, and OMICmAge, whereas ldFTD associations were limited to Retroclock and OMICmAge. These results indicate that SAGs capture cross-sectional multilevel aging-related variation and may offer a scalable, culturally adaptable, low-cost biomarker candidate for research in underrepresented global settings.

Science AdvancesVol. 12(40)
Universidad de Santiago de Chile (CL), Ikerbasque (ES), Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira (VE), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (CL), Universidad del Desarrollo (CL), Harvard University (US), National University of Quilmes (AR), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (AR), Universidad de La Sabana (CO), Universidad de Los Andes (CO), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (ES), University of Concepción (CL), Universidade de São Paulo (BR), University of California, San Francisco (US), Trinity College Dublin (IE), Adolfo Ibáñez University (CL), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (CO), Universidad de Buenos Aires (AR), Clínica Alemana (CL), Aarhus University Hospital (DK), Bariloche Atomic Centre (AR), San Sebastián University (CL), Istanbul Medipol University (TR), Universidad de Antioquia (CO), Universidad Nacional de Colombia (CO), University of California San Diego (US), University of San Andrés (AR), Massachusetts General Hospital (US), Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán (MX), Fundación Valle del Lili (CO), Hospital del Salvador (CL), Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (ES), University Memory and Aging Center (US), Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (US), Pasqual Maragall Foundation (ES), Universidad Católica de Cuyo (AR), Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (ES), Hospital Clínico de la Universidad de Chile (CL), Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá (CO), Institute of Peruvian Studies (PE), Instituto de Neurociencia Biomédica (CL), Institute on Aging (US), Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (BR), Hospital Universitario San Ignacio (CO), Global Brain Health Institute (US), University of Chile (CL), Federico Santa María Technical University (CL), Icesi University (CO), Universidad del Valle (CO)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 10%
Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
AI Navigator

Ask Laika to Summarize, Analyze, and Connect papers live on the map.

Summarize Papers & Methodologies

Extract key findings, datasets, and comparative methods across publications.

Benchmark Rankings & Visual Analytics

Rank top research institutions, authors, funders, topics, and journals by Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and paper volume with instant charts.

Connect Distant Disciplines

Bridge topological clusters on the map to find hidden collaborative intersections.