Today we are talking about Language and Communication in Dementia – part of a two part of a global special, where we catch up with people from both sides of the globe tackling the same challenges!

Lakshini Mendis talks with this passionate group of people from University College London - Anna Volkmer, Professor Rosemary Varley and Dr Vitor Zimmerer.

Language is important to humans, it's how we express our feelings and emotions, it impacts our quality of life, and life of those around us. So the ability to understand and produce language both spoken and written is important.

Communication is bigger than language, not all is verbal and is integrated with other behaviours, like politeness and expression, and social behaviour. When the brain goes wrong we see language and communication change.

Research is looking at ways to measure language, but it's complicated - how can you measure it? Can machine learning help? And how can we support people to continue to communicate and extend use of language when the brain fails? Is it also possible to determine the type of dementia someone has through how language is lost? In this podcast Rosemary, Victor and Anna will address these issues and more.

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www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk