Publication

On Detection of Depression in Parkinson’s Disease Patients’ Speech: Handcrafted Features vs. Speech Foundation Models

2026

Abstract

This study investigates speech-based depression detection in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD), comparing two feature representation approaches: interpretable handcrafted acoustic features and non-interpretable representations derived from Speech Foundation Models (SFMs). Using the DAIC-WOZ corpus for typical depression (non-PD speech) and the PD-Depression corpus for depression in atypical speech (PD speech). We first examine the viability of handcrafted features and then analyse how acoustic descriptors differ across these conditions. We then evaluate SFM-based representations on the PD-Depression dataset using a cross-validation-based layer selection methodology. Results suggest that handcrafted features yield better classification performance for depression in PD speech compared to SFM embeddings. Analysis shows that while typical depression is marked by pitch instability and reduced vocal quality, speech from PD patients with depression exhibits broader spectral variability, likely due to motor impairments associated with hypokinetic dysarthria.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/ec525185-8261-4ef6-89fc-11fe8367302e

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

2026

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/ec525185-8261-4ef6-89fc-11fe8367302e

About this result

Related concepts (32)

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a chronic degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that affects both the motor system and non-motor systems. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms become more common. Early symptoms are tremor, rigidity, slowness of movement, and difficulty with walking. Problems may also arise with cognition, behaviour, sleep, and sensory systems. Parkinson's disease dementia becomes common in advanced stages of the disease.

Schizoid personality disorder

Schizoid personality disorder (ˈskɪtsɔɪd,_ˈskɪdzɔɪd,_ˈskɪzɔɪd, often abbreviated as SzPD or ScPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency toward a solitary or sheltered lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, detachment, and apathy. Affected individuals may be unable to form intimate attachments to others and simultaneously possess a rich and elaborate but exclusively internal fantasy world.

Dysarthria

Dysarthria is a speech sound disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor–speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes. In other words, it is a condition in which problems effectively occur with the muscles that help produce speech, often making it very difficult to pronounce words. It is unrelated to problems with understanding language (that is, dysphasia or aphasia), although a person can have both.