From the whispered secrets of the mind to the untold stories that lie within, language remains our most potent tool for unravelling the mystery of schizophrenia.
Drawing upon advancements in computational linguistics, Tyler Dalal, MD student at the Schulich explored if the subtle intricacies of speech patterns in schizophrenia vary across the diverse clinical phases of psychosis.
Through a structured task, we elicited 3 minutes of speech from each participant, then transformed these verbal exchanges into quantitative measures across 12 linguistic variables, encompassing lexical, syntactic, and semantic domains.
The results of Tyler’s endeavour yielded a compelling narrative: a three-cluster solution emerged, each with a somewhat distinct linguistic pattern. The largest cluster, encompassing a majority of HC and patients alike, unveiled a ‘typical linguistic profile (TLP)’, characterized by linguistic norms commonly observed in neurotypical individuals.
Two atypical clusters, the first, inhabited predominantly by individuals in the early stages of psychosis (EPP – early phase profile), had subjects with diminished cohesion and analytical structure. In contrast, the second atypical cluster, predominantly comprising individuals with established schizophrenia (SPP – stable phase profile), had perceptual richness intertwined with impoverishment, characterized by simpler syntactic structures and a notable lack of reference to prior information.
The significance of these findings extends beyond mere academic curiosity.
First, the majority of patients are nestled within the ‘typical language subgroup’.
Second, one atypical subgroup, exclusive to the early phases of psychosis, unveiled a higher load of clinically detectable disorganization and impoverishment, offering a glimpse into the trajectory of linguistic aberrations in schizophrenia.