Alzheimer’s Disease and Language: Development and Prospects

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by progressive cognitive impairment and memory impairment. With search keywords set as “Alzheimer’s (disease)” and “language” and the publication date set from January 1, 2020 to October 30, 2022, we retrieved 61 pieces of Chinese literature from CNKI and 176 English results from the Web of Science Core Collection. Data were screened manually and processed with CiteSpace 6.1.R3 and biblioshiny. This study tries to map out the developments of research on language related to Alzheimer’s disease both in the Chinese science circle and the international academic circle during the recent two decades (2000-2022). Investigations are also conducted to identify possibilities and opportunities for research fronts. Current studies on the association between Alzheimer’s disease and language are characterized by task singularity, subject specificality, institution pluralism, and treatment locality. Future studies are suggested to incorporate neuro-scanning technologies to obtain a clearer message of the neural mechanism. Lifelong bilinguals who use language as a profession such as translators and interpreters are also possible subject groups for future investigations to grasp a both general and specific picture of the association between Alzheimer’s disease and language.To overcome our limitations, it is crucial to gather more scientific findings using non-destructive and highly sensitive technologies to understand language impairments in Alzheimer's disease more comprehensively.