# Speech markers of cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease

> **NIH NIH K23** · UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS MED SCH WORCESTER · 2020 · $189,216

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Dr. Kara Smith is a Movement Disorders neurologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical
School (UMMS) whose goal is to become an independent investigator focused on early cognitive impairment in
Parkinson disease (PD). Her long-term goal is to develop speech markers of cognitive impairment in PD.
Cognitive impairment occurs in the majority of PD patients, leading to increased mortality and decreased
quality of life. The current diagnostic tools are resource-intensive and have limited sensitivity. Treatments are
often offered late in the course of cognitive decline and do not provide optimal benefit. Speech markers could
improve detection, monitoring and treatment of cognitive impairment in PD. Speech markers could be
monitored frequently and remotely via mobile technology, capturing sensitive, quantitative data about cognitive
function in the context of patients’ daily life and in response to therapeutics. Dr. Smith’s role as a clinical
movement disorders specialist ideally positions her to lead the application of advanced speech and language
research to feasible, patient-oriented tools for real-life clinical practice and clinical trials.
Dr. Smith has assembled an expert interdisciplinary mentorship team ideally suited for the goals of this
innovative proposal. Dr. Smith and her team have previously shown that a) speech acoustic markers are
associated with cognitive function in non-demented PD patients, and b) PD patients with mild cognitive
impairment had linguistic deficits including pauses within utterances and grammaticality. Building on these
results, Dr. Smith proposes to study speech and language more comprehensively in PD patients with and
without mild cognitive impairment and controls to confirm these preliminary results and identify additional
biomarkers. The aims of this study will be 1) to develop algorithms using speech acoustic markers to
categorize by cognitive status, 2) to identify linguistic markers associated with mild cognitive impairment in PD,
and 3) to assess on-line syntactic processing in PD subjects with mild cognitive impairment. The overall goal of
the proposal is to identify speech and language markers of early cognitive dysfunction that can be further
refined, validated and implemented using mobile technology into a larger scale, longitudinal R01 proposal.
Further work will also address the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of these speech markers.
Dr. Smith’s rigorous training plan includes a Master’s degree, linguistics and speech motor physiology courses,
and experience in signal processing and speech acoustic analysis. Through her training goals, she will
advance her knowledge and skills in patient-centered outcomes measures and instrument validation. She will
gain experience in research leadership, presentation and dissemination of scientific work, and in grant writing,
culminating in an R01 proposal. This K23 award will be critical for Dr. Smith to establish an independent career
as a PD cli...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9883772
- **Project number:** 5K23DC016656-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIV OF MASSACHUSETTS MED SCH WORCESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** Kara Michelle Smith
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $189,216
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-03-04 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9883772

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9883772, Speech markers of cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease (5K23DC016656-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9883772. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*