LiMoN-2: Linguistic Markers of Neurodegeneration in Bilinguals

The increasing prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases poses a significant global health challenge, impacting individuals and communities across diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. A cutting-edge approach for patient assessment consists in automated speech and language analysis (ASLA), which can reveal early markers of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Yet, these instruments present two main limitations that compromise their relevance for global brain health equity. First, evidence on their validity comes mostly from English speakers, yielding patterns that may not generalize to other language groups. Second, validation studies are performed almost exclusively on participants’ first language, casting doubts on which markers may be relevant during second language testing (as is typical with bilingual immigrants). We aim to shed light on speech and language markers of neurodegeneration in multilinguals residing in Switzerland and Peru, two regions marked by linguistic diversity. We will leverage a multicentric partnership granting access to a unique cohort of bilingual AD and bvFTD patients, state-of-the-art, empirically validate harmonized ASLA protocol, and cutting-edge multimodal neuroimaging methodologies.