Disease Delineation for Multiple Sclerosis, Friedreich Ataxia, and Healthy Controls Using Supervised Machine Learning on Speech Acoustics

Neurodegenerative disease often affects speech. Speech acoustics can be used as objective clinical markers of pathology. Previous investigations of pathological speech have primarily compared controls with one specific condition and excluded comorbidities. We broaden the utility of speech markers by examining how multiple acoustic features can delineate diseases. We used supervised machine learning with gradient boosting (CatBoost) to delineate healthy speech from speech of people with multiple sclerosis or Friedreich ataxia. Participants performed a diadochokinetic task where they repeated alternating syllables. We subjected 74 spectral and temporal prosodic features from the speech recordings to machine learning. Results showed that Friedreich ataxia, multiple sclerosis and healthy controls were all identified with high accuracy (over 82%). Twenty-one acoustic features were strong markers of neurodegenerative diseases, falling under the categories of spectral qualia, spectral power, and speech rate. We demonstrated that speech markers can delineate neurodegenerative diseases and distinguish healthy speech from pathological speech with high accuracy. Findings emphasize the importance of examining speech outcomes when assessing indicators of neurodegenerative disease. We propose large-scale initiatives to broaden the scope for differentiating other neurological diseases and affective disorders.