TY - GEN
T1 - Handwriting dynamics as an indicator of cognitive reserve: an exploratory study
AU - Angelillo, Maria Teresa
AU - Impedovo, Donato
AU - Pirlo, Giuseppe
AU - Sarcinella, Lucia
AU - Vessio, Gennaro
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Education may play a key role in developing 'cognitive reserve' against neurodegenerative dementia. In this work, we investigate for the first time if handwriting dynamics can serve as a quantitative indicator of this reserve. We carried out an exploratory study involving a sample of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects, with high and low education respectively, and a sample of healthy elder controls. We asked them to perform three complex handwriting tasks on a digitizing tablet: Drawing a clock; copying a check; writing a spontaneous sentence. Dynamic measures of the handwriting were then analyzed both with an unsupervised and a supervised machine learning approach. The results we obtained suggest that: (i) handwriting of MCI subjects with high reserve is quite similar to that of controls; (ii) handwriting of MCI subjects with lower reserve is easier to be distinguished from the other two. Dynamic handwriting analysis could provide a novel methodology to elucidate the still unknown mechanisms underlying brain resilience.
AB - Education may play a key role in developing 'cognitive reserve' against neurodegenerative dementia. In this work, we investigate for the first time if handwriting dynamics can serve as a quantitative indicator of this reserve. We carried out an exploratory study involving a sample of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects, with high and low education respectively, and a sample of healthy elder controls. We asked them to perform three complex handwriting tasks on a digitizing tablet: Drawing a clock; copying a check; writing a spontaneous sentence. Dynamic measures of the handwriting were then analyzed both with an unsupervised and a supervised machine learning approach. The results we obtained suggest that: (i) handwriting of MCI subjects with high reserve is quite similar to that of controls; (ii) handwriting of MCI subjects with lower reserve is easier to be distinguished from the other two. Dynamic handwriting analysis could provide a novel methodology to elucidate the still unknown mechanisms underlying brain resilience.
KW - Education, Task analysis, Writing, Clocks, Principal component analysis, Dementia, Acceleration
KW - Education, Task analysis, Writing, Clocks, Principal component analysis, Dementia, Acceleration
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10807/149728
U2 - 10.1109/SMC.2019.8914157
DO - 10.1109/SMC.2019.8914157
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 978-1-7281-4570-9
VL - 2019
T3 - CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS / IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEMS MAN AND CYBERNETICS
SP - 835
EP - 840
BT - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC)
T2 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC 2019
Y2 - 6 October 2019 through 9 October 2019
ER -