Faktion

 Jos Polfliet

Detecting early-onset Alzheimer through NLP e-mail analysis

The overall lifetime probability of getting Alzheimer is one out of every five people. Early detection is crucial to delay the onset of increasingly serious symptoms. Unfortunately, too many people still believe Alzheimer is a disease for older people, while in reality the onset can happen way before reaching the age of 65. Symptoms include a significant decrease in vocabulary size, the increase in use of less specific words like ("things" or "stuff") and simpler grammar. These can be detected automatically by using NLP techniques to compare writing patterns over time. To do this, we analyze writing style in e-mail archive data of healthy individuals versus people diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers. Faktion collaborated with Alzheimer Liga Vlaanderen, University of Antwerp and AContrario.