Quick-talking people may have better brain health in old age: study

By Imogen Howse via SWNS

Quick-talking people may have better brain health in old age, a new study has suggested.

As we age, some people find it longer to find the right words for a sentence – prompting concerns about cognitive decline and dementia.

However, a new study by researchers in Toronto, Canada, has discovered that the speed at which we talk is actually a better indicator of brain health.

Meanwhile, difficulty finding words appears to just be a natural part of aging.

A team from the University of Toronto and Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care invited 125 volunteers aged between 18 and 90 to complete three different assessments.

The first assessment was a picture-naming game, in which participants had to answer questions about photos while ignoring distracting words they heard through headphones.

For example, one participant might be looking at a picture of a mop while someone says the word ‘broom’.

This enabled researchers to test an individual’s ability to recall the correct word, regardless of distraction.

During the second task, participants were recorded as they described two complex pictures for 60 seconds each.

Their language was then analyzed using artificial intelligence software, with a particular focus on how quickly they spoke and how frequently they paused.

Finally, the volunteers completed standard tests to assess their mental abilities, particularly those that tend to decline with age and indicate an increased risk of dementia.

This included a focus on executive function, which means you can pay attention to a challenge, manage conflicting information, ignore distractions, and juggle multiple tasks simultaneously.

Results, published in the journal Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition, found that, as expected, many abilities declined with age.

This included ‘word finding speed’, the speed at which someone can recognize a picture and recall its name.

However, to the researchers’ surprise, their study revealed that a decrease in word-finding speed was not associated with a decline in other mental abilities.

Instead, the speed at which participants spoke in general was the better indicator of overall brain health.

Lead author Dr Jed Meltzer, Baycrest’s Canada Research Chair in Interventional Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “Our results indicate that changes in general talking speed may reflect changes in the brain.

“We found that it wasn’t pausing to find words that showed the strongest link to brain health, but rather the speed of the speech that surrounded the pauses.

“The slowing down of speech may therefore be a more important indicator of changes to brain health.

“This suggests that talking speed should be tested as part of standard cognitive assessments.

“Hopefully, this will help clinicians detect cognitive decline faster and help older adults support their brain health as they age.”

Dr. Meltzer added that many older adults concerned about their need to pause to search for words can be reassured by the study, which suggests that this is simply a normal part of aging.

In future studies, the research team hopes to conduct the same tests with a group of participants over several years, to examine whether speed of speech is truly predictive of brain health for individuals as they age.

These results could support the development of tools to detect cognitive decline as early as possible, which will hopefully allow for more effective intervention.