Redefining Cognitive Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease through Next-generation Digital Cognitive Biomarkers FRP

Focused Research Program

Our Focus

Digital biomarkers derived from raw digital data streams of sensor-enabled technologies can reveal subtle shifts in cognition, speech, and movement that standard clinical summary scores miss, enabling earlier, more personalized interventions and more sensitive longitudinal monitoring of disease progression. The goal of this FRP is to establish BU as a global leader in the development of digital biomarkers of cognition that detect early cognitive decline and differentiate average cognitive aging from changes due to Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders by bringing together expertise in aging, neuropsychology, linguistics, biostatistics, engineering, data science, AI/ML, and computational methods.

Focused Research Program led by:

Stacy Andersen, PhD, Associate Professor, Medicine, Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Katherine Gifford, PsyD, Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Research Thrusts

1. Active, test-based digital cognitive biomarkers from voice and pen data

This thrust seeks to leverage existing digital pen and voice, speech, and language data from large-scale longitudinal studies of health, aging, and longevity (New England Centenarian Study, Long Life Family Study, and Framingham Heart Study) and perform theory-driven and data-driven methods of feature extraction to create a robust dataset of digital cognitive biomarkers that can be used to study determinants of cognitive aging and risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.

2. Passive digital cognitive biomarkers from wearables and continuous monitoring devices

This thrust aims to leverage AI and machine learning to develop, train, and test models to learn from existing accelerometry data from large-scale longitudinal observational studies to identify novel metrics of physical activity and sleep that are predictors of cognitive function and risk of ADRD.

3. Multimodal digital biomarker signatures and integration with physiology

The goal of this thrust is to create robust signatures of multimodal digital biomarkers and correlate them with other existing measures of physiology (e.g., MRI markers and omics data).

Sponsor

This Focused Research Program is funded by the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.

How to get involved?

For program specific inquiries and questions, please contact FRP leaders: Stacy Andersen (stacy@bu.edu) or Katherine Gifford (kgifford@bu.edu).

Faculty interested in submitting a Focused Research Programs proposal are strongly encouraged to discuss their ideas with Hariri Institute Director Yannis Paschalidis (yannisp@bu.edu).

To learn more details about the Hariri Institute’s Focused Research Programs, visit here.