# Meeting background

## 1. Background:

Paper by [Kavya et al 2020](https://kavyamanohar.com/documents/tsd_morph_complexity_ml.pdf) described a quantitative measure for understanding the complexity of malayalam language using the following measures
* type-token growth rate (TTGR)
* type-token ratio (TTR)
* moving average type-token ratio (MATTR)

### Important points:
Malayalam clearly shows more morphological complexity than the European languages, Finnish, Estonian, Czech, Slovak, English and Spanish in terms of TTR/MATTR values
(If the language rules are more the complex, can the deficits be more pronounced??)

## 2. Relevance:

Since spoken language is a window to the thought process, delineating differences in speech transcript parameters (language/linguistic/cognitive domain-specific) and classifying patients using quantitative measures might aid in clinical management.

* Potential use of this quantitative measures (TTR/MATTR/TTGR and may be others) for phenotyping speech/thought deficits in psychiatric disorders (in Malayalam speaking patients)

## 3. References for language and Schizophrenia based on TTR:
1. [10.1192/bjp.139.1.7](https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.139.1.7)
2. [10.1017/s0033291700003159](https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033291700003159)
3. [10.1093/schbul/23.1.63](https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/23.1.63)
4. [10.1177/002383098502800303](https://doi.org/10.1177/002383098502800303)

## 3. Use case:

### a. Immediate:
* Identify deficits in thought & cognition by analysing spoken language in individuals with psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, Major depression)

* Scenario:
* Giving a specific context
* Free speech
* drug naive?
* drug resistant?

* To examine how complexity of the language (malayalam) is affected in psychiatric disorders in general

### b. Extended:
* *To device a quantitative measure for language deficits/thought disorder for genetic studies* (!!)
* *Develop app to evaluate language deficits (?)

## 4. Feasibility:

- feasibility??
- number of cases?
- time needed?

## 5. Limitations

* logistical
* speech to text/transcript
* Hardware

## 6. Notes

a. Schizophrenia and language
--------------------------
Type-token ratio used in schizophrenia: a measure of repetition in language,
* correlates with clinical judgements of thought disorder
* differentiates statistically thought-disordered from non-thought-disordered schizophrenics
* psychiatric and normal controls