Speech graphs provide a quantitative measure of thought disorder in psychosis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Psychosis has various causes, including mania and schizophrenia. Since the differential diagnosis of psychosis is exclusively based on subjective assessments of oral interviews with patients, an objective quantification of the speech disturbances that characterize mania and schizophrenia is in order. In principle, such quantification could be achieved by the analysis of speech graphs. A graph represents a network with nodes connected by edges; in speech graphs, nodes correspond to words and edges correspond to semantic and grammatical relationships.

Methodology/principal findings

To quantify speech differences related to psychosis, interviews with schizophrenics, manics and normal subjects were recorded and represented as graphs. Manics scored significantly higher

SUBMITTER: Mota NB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3322168 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature