Crosslinguistic speech patterns: biosocial markers of psychiatric disorders

Rationale for the workshop

Speech provides a unique lens on the inner thought processes and dynamics of the human mind, and thereby provides an indirect window into the brain function and its pathologies. Research has shown that particular speech patterns relate to specific brain pathologies, and therefore they may serve as bio-social markers in psychiatric disorders and other medical conditions. However, at present it is unknown what measurement(s) reflecting such disorders would be accepted across lifetime, cultures, social strata, languages, and individuals. In fact, technical, public-health and translational challenges must be overcome before research on clinical applications of speech analysis can be used clinically and implemented within traditional medical settings worldwide. This is why both senior and junior experts in computer sciences, linguistics, psychiatry and philosophy/ethics need to be provided with ample time to spark new ideas, seek serendipity, and foster new fundamental or applied knowledge to tackle these challenges.

Aims of the workshop

The first aim of the workshop will be to have multidisciplinary activities about what knowledge and tools we need to transform a speech bio-social marker that seems to work in the lab into a clinical useful psychiatric outcome to aid in the risk assessment, diagnosis, monitoring, and measurement of treatment-response in public healthcare facilities. The second aim will be to lay the groundwork for creating/maintaining (inter)national short and long-term collaborations that may help to bridge the gap between this linguistic bio-social marker and public health-care psychiatric facilities across countries, cultures, social strata, and languages. The results of the workshop will be widely disseminated through the DISCOURSE in psychosis consortium