High amyloid burden is associated with fewer specific words during spontaneous speech in individuals with subjective cognitive decline.

Self-perceived word-finding difficulties are common in aging individuals as well as in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Language and speech deficits are difficult to objectify with neuropsychological assessments. We therefore aimed to investigate whether amyloid, an early AD pathological hallmark, is associated with speech-derived semantic complexity. We included 63 individuals with subjective cognitive decline (age 64 ±â€¯8, MMSE 29 ±â€¯1), with amyloid status (positron emission tomography [PET] scans n = 59, or Aß1-42 cerebrospinal fluid [CSF] n = 4). Spontaneous speech was recorded using three open-ended tasks (description of cookie theft picture, abstract painting and a regular Sunday), transcribed verbatim and subsequently, linguistic parameters were extracted using T-scan computational software, including specific words (content words, frequent, concrete and abstract nouns, and fillers), lexical complexity (lemma frequency, Type-Token-Ratio) and syntactic complexity (Developmental Level scale). Nineteen individuals (30%) had high levels of amyloid burden, and there were no differences between groups on conventional neuropsychological tests. Using multinomial regression with linguistic parameters (in tertiles), we found that high amyloid burden is associated with fewer concrete nouns (ORmiddle (95%CI): 7.6 (1.4-41.2), ORlowest: 6.7 (1.2-37.1)) and content words (ORlowest: 6.3 (1.0-38.1). In addition, we found an interaction for education between high amyloid burden and more abstract nouns. In conclusion, high amyloid burden was modestly associated with fewer specific words, but not with syntactic complexity, lexical complexity or conventional neuropsychological tests, suggesting that subtle spontaneous speech deficits might occur in preclinical AD.

Self-Reported Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms Among Adults Referred to a Gender Identity Clinic.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to (1) investigate autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms in a sample of adults referred for gender dysphoria (GD) compared to typically developing (TD) populations, (2) see whether males assigned at birth with GD (MaBGDs) and females assigned at birth with GD (FaBGDs) differ in ASD symptom levels, (3) study the role of sexual orientation, and (4) investigate ASD symptoms' correlation with GD symptoms. METHODS: The Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) was used to measure ASD symptoms, and the Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale (UGDS) was used to measure the intensity of GD. Mean AQ scores of adults referred for GD (n = 326; 191 MaBGD and 135 FaBGD) were compared to three TD populations taken from the literature (n = 1316; 667 male and 644 female, 5 birth-assigned sex unknown). RESULTS: The mean AQ score in individuals referred for GD was similar to the TD samples. FaBGDs showed higher mean AQ scores than MaBGDs, and they had mean scores similar to TD individuals of the same experienced gender (TD males). After selecting individuals with an UGDS score indicative of GD, a positive association between ASD and GD symptoms was found. CONCLUSION: The co-occurrence of GD and ASD in adults may not be as prevalent as previously suggested. Attenuation of sex differences in ASD might explain FaBGDs' and MaBGDs' ASD symptoms' similarity to those of TD individuals of the same experienced gender. Intensity of ASD symptoms might be correlated with intensity of GD symptoms, warranting further studies to elaborate on their potential co-occurrence.