What your voice
reveals about ageing
Can our speech show whether our brain and body seem older than our age?
SBR Project ID
#BBHM02
Date of project
2020–2026
Location
Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru
Type of project
Observational Study
Categories
Lead institution and funders












Ask someone to describe a short film and you hear more than the story: how quickly they speak, how often they pause and which words they choose. All of these change as we get older, and with dementia.
Scientists can measure signs of ageing with ageing clocksA brain clock, for example, estimates age from brain scans. If the estimate is higher than a person’s real age, their brain appears older than expected.: tools that estimate how old a person’s brain or body appears and compare it with their real age. Many rely on brain scans or blood tests, which are costly and not available everywhere.
So we built a “speech clock”: a computer model that estimates a person’s age from hundreds of features of their speech. We used recordings of 2,928 Spanish speakers in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Some were healthy volunteers; others had mild cognitive impairmentMemory or thinking problems that can be measured on tests but are not severe enough to be called dementia., Alzheimer’s disease or frontotemporal dementiaA group of dementias caused by damage to the front and sides of the brain. Depending on the form, it mainly affects behaviour, movement or language..
The difference between the age the speech clock estimates and a person’s real age is their speech age gap. We wanted to find out whether this gap reveals anything about a person’s brain, body, health and life circumstances.
57 Million
People
worldwide were living with dementia in 2021, over 60% of them in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health OrganizationRead the World Health Organization’s dementia fact sheet, updated 3 July 2026..
2,928
People
who speak Spanish, from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, took part in this study.
700+
Speech features
were measured from each person’s recordings, from pauses and pitch to the words they chose.
Follow this research
Get an email whenever we publish new findings on this project.
AIMS
What we want to know
Our study asked three questions.
We recorded people doing seven short speaking tasks and measured hundreds of features of their speech, from pauses and pitch to the words they chose. We trained a computer model to estimate each person’s age from these features alone, and checked how close its estimates came to their real age.
For each person we worked out their speech age gapThe age the speech clock estimated from a person’s speech, minus their real age. A positive gap means their speech seems older than expected for their age; a negative gap means it seems younger.: the age the speech clock estimated minus their real age. We compared this gap between healthy volunteers and people with mild cognitive impairmentMemory or thinking problems that can be measured on tests but are not severe enough to be called dementia. or Alzheimer’s disease. We also included two groups of people with frontotemporal dementiaA group of dementias caused by damage to the front and sides of the brain. Depending on the form, it mainly affects behaviour, movement or language.: forms that mainly affect behaviour or movement, and forms that mainly affect language.
We compared each person’s speech age gap with their brain age from MRI scans and their age estimated from chemical marks on their DNA. We also compared it with their blood level of p-tau217A form of the tau protein that can be measured in a blood sample. It is one of the most important blood markers of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain., their memory and thinking scores, and a score for their life circumstances. Not everyone had all of these measures.

IMPORTANCE
Why it matters
A measure of ageing based on voice recordings could reach people that scanners and laboratories do not. Speech can be recorded remotely, repeatedly, without needles or scanners, and at very low cost.
Where the research is done matters too. People in Latin America have historically been underrepresented in dementia research. Many live where brain scans and specialist blood tests are hard to get. Because this study involved people in five Latin American countries, it provides evidence that advanced measures of ageing need not depend only on expensive technology.
If voice recordings can show whether the brain and body seem older than expected, measuring ageing could become possible far beyond specialist clinics.

PROJECT
So we set up a study
Everyone in this study took part through the Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat)A network of research centres that aims to expand dementia research in Latin America and the Caribbean. Opens the ReDLat project page on the Global Brain Health Institute website.. It recruits volunteers through memory clinics, hospitals, universities, community outreach and public-health campaigns, and every site uses the same standard tests and diagnostic procedures. Nobody was given a treatment: this is an observational study, and it is mainly cross-sectionalA study that mainly measures each person at one point in time, rather than following them over months or years..
Who took part
Group 1 · 1,504 people
Healthy volunteers
People who passed standard memory and thinking checks and could manage daily life independently.
Group 2 · 1,068 people
Alzheimer’s disease
People diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease by specialist teams, using established clinical criteria.
Group 3 · 255 people
Dementia affecting behaviour or movement
People with forms of frontotemporal dementia that mainly change behaviour or movement rather than language. They include behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, corticobasal syndrome and progressive supranuclear palsy.
Group 4 · 77 people
Dementia affecting language
People with one of two forms of primary progressive aphasia (nonfluent and semantic). In these forms of frontotemporal dementia, language problems are the main feature.
A further 24 people had mild cognitive impairmentMemory or thinking problems that can be measured on tests but are not severe enough to be called dementia.. Altogether, 67% of the people taking part were women, and their ages ranged from 18 to 88.
What we measured
Speech
Each person did seven short speaking tasks in Spanish. They described a short animated film, named words starting with a given letter (twice) or from a category such as animals (twice), and retold a short story straight away and again about 20–30 minutes later. Software turned the recordings into transcripts, which people then checked. More than 700 features were then measured automatically.
Brain age
MRI scans of brain structure, and of brain activity at rest, were analysed with brain clocksComputer models that estimate how old a brain looks from MRI scans. Here we used scans of brain structure and of brain activity at rest..
DNA age
Blood samples were analysed for chemical marks on DNA that change with age. Three established epigenetic clocksTools that estimate a person’s age from chemical marks on their DNA, called methylation, which change as the body ages., which we call DNA clocks, turned these into an estimated age.
Alzheimer’s blood marker
Blood levels of p-tau217A form of the tau protein that can be measured in a blood sample. It is one of the most important blood markers of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain..
Memory and thinking
Standard tests of memory, attention, mental flexibility, naming and overall thinking, plus questionnaires about how well people manage everyday life. Some tests use language, such as recalling a story; others don’t, such as copying and later recalling a drawing.
Life circumstances
A detailed questionnaire combined into one score, the social exposomeAll the social circumstances a person has been exposed to across their life, such as education, money, food and healthcare, combined into one score., covering education, food security, money, possessions, access to healthcare, work in childhood, how well-off people feel, childhood experiences, traumatic events and relationships.
Building the speech clock
We grouped the most useful speech features into seven families. Two describe how speech sounds: its timing, and its pitch and voice qualityWhether the voice tends towards the low or high end of its range, and how steady and clear it sounds from one vibration of the vocal cords to the next.. Five describe the words: how concrete, how specific and how common they were, their emotional tone, and the mix of words: how many were content words and how many were pronouns.
A computer model learned to estimate age from these seven families. The model was tested on people whose recordings had been held back from that round of training, so it could not simply remember them. We then worked out each person’s speech age gapThe age the speech clock estimated from a person’s speech, minus their real age. A positive gap means their speech seems older than expected for their age; a negative gap means it seems younger. and adjusted it for a known statistical bias: age estimates tend to drift towards the average, overestimating younger people and underestimating older people.
From recording to finding
Steps 1 to 4 were done for each person; in step 3 the model had been trained on other people’s recordings. Step 5 compares people as groups.

RESULTS
What we have found so far
Here is what the recordings of 2,928 people showed. In short, the way people spoke reflected more than their age. It was also linked to signs of ageing in their brain and body, to their memory and thinking, to dementia and to their life circumstances.
Open each question to see what we found.
Question 1Can the way a person speaks be used to estimate their age?
Yes. The speech clock picked up a moderate but clear age signal: on average, its estimate was about 9 years away from a person’s real age. Some families of speech features mattered more than others:
Pointing to younger-seeming speech
The mix of words. The share of content words, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, and of pronouns, such as “I” and “he”. Together with speech timing, this family mattered most for younger-seeming speech.
Speech timing. Faster speech: more syllables per second, and shorter syllables.
How specific the words were. For example, saying “poodle” rather than “animal”.
Pointing to older-seeming speech
Pitch and voice quality. Whether the voice tended towards the low or high end of its range, and how clear rather than breathy or hoarse it sounded. It also covers tiny wobbles in pitch and loudness from one vibration of the vocal cords to the next. Together with emotional tone, this family mattered most for older-seeming speech.
Emotional tone. How much the words expressed negative feelings, and how much they reflected sadness, anger, fear, disgust or surprise.
How concrete the words were. How far people used words for things you can see or touch, such as “table”, or for ideas, such as “freedom”.
The timing and word-specificity scores each run in one direction, so faster speech and more specific words went with younger-seeming speech. For the other families, we report which way each family pointed as a whole, not each measure within it. For example, we cannot say whether a voice tending towards the low or the high end of its range went with older-seeming speech. The seventh family, how common the words were, was not linked to either direction in our analysis.
Question 2Is the gap between speech age and real age larger in people with memory and thinking problems?
Yes. Healthy volunteers had the smallest speech age gaps. People with mild cognitive impairment (a small group of 24) and every group with dementia had larger ones. The gap was larger in frontotemporal dementia than in Alzheimer’s disease, and largest of all in the forms that mainly affect language.
The speech age gap separated healthy volunteers from each dementia group better than any single type of speech measure, or even a combination of the best individual measures. The differences held after taking account of age, sex, education, country, an overall score for other illnesses and the number of languages people spoke, and when each country was left out in turn.
Question 3Is the speech age gap linked to brain age, DNA age, an Alzheimer’s blood marker, memory and thinking, and life circumstances?
Yes. People whose speech seemed older than their age also tended to have older-looking brains and DNA, lower memory and thinking scores and harder life circumstances. These measures go together, but this study can’t show that one causes another.
What older-seeming speech went with
Older-looking brain
On brain clocks from MRI scans of structure and activity, in healthy volunteers and in every dementia group. This was the strongest link.
Older-looking DNA
On all three DNA clocks, most consistently in healthy volunteers and people with Alzheimer’s disease.
More p-tau217
Higher blood levels of this Alzheimer’s marker across everyone tested, and within the Alzheimer’s group. There was no link within the other groups.
Lower memory and thinking scores
On tests of overall thinking, attention and mental flexibility, and several kinds of memory, including tests that don’t use language. The link was stronger for tests that do.
Less independence in daily life
Less ability to manage everyday activities on one’s own, in Alzheimer’s disease and in dementia affecting behaviour or movement.
Harder life circumstances
Less favourable life circumstances, in healthy volunteers and people with Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our voice appears to contain much more information about aging than we previously recognised.”

UNEXPLORED
Unexplored questions
Like all good research, this study answered some questions and raised others. Explore the topics below to see what we still need to know.
Tap or click a pin to open each one.

FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Can a speech recording tell me whether I have dementia?
No. The speech clock is not a test for dementia. We found differences between groups of people, and it has not been tested as a way to diagnose one person. Because most of our measurements come from a single point in time, it also can’t show who will go on to develop dementia. Studies that follow people over time, and in other languages, are needed first.
What does it mean if someone’s speech seems older than their age?
In this study it was a pattern across groups of people, not a verdict on one person. A single person’s speech can be affected by many things, such as mood, health or the recording itself.
Why was the study done in Latin America?
People in Latin America have been underrepresented in dementia research. ReDLat brings together research centres across the region to expand that research, and this study used the data its teams collected.
Why can’t anyone download the speech data?
Because features of a person’s speech can identify them. Researchers can apply for the individual-level data through a formal data-sharing agreement approved by an ethics board, a process that can take up to 12 weeks. The analysis code and summary data are openly available.

TIMELINE
The long journey
ReDLat begins
Leaders in dementia research from Latin America meet at the University of California, San Francisco, to launch ReDLat, the consortium through which this study’s data were collected.
Published in Science Advances
The findings are published in the journal Science AdvancesRead the original research paper: Hernandez et al., Science Advances, 30 September 2026..

IMPACT
What’s happened
Here’s some of what we’ve published and contributed to. We’ll keep adding to this as the work develops.
Published in Science Advances
Analysis code openly available

FUTURE
Hopes for the future
Through this research, we hope to:
develop low-cost ways to monitor healthy and faster ageing from speech recordings
see speech clocks, perhaps combined with other biomarkers, complement more expensive measures of ageing
help make brain health research fairer across countries and cultures

TEAM
Who are we?
Lead Investigator

Professor Agustin Ibanez
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Istanbul Medipol University, Türkiye
Pasqual Maragall Foundation, Spain
Co-investigators

Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, Colombia
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Harvard University, USA
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Universidad San Sebastián, Chile
Show 45 more
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad Nacional Experimental del Táchira, Venezuela
Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Spain
Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Spain
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de Concepción, Chile
CONICET, Argentina
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Centro Interdisciplinario de Neurociencia de Valparaíso, Chile
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina
Aarhus Universitetshospital, Denmark
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
CONICET, Argentina
Universidad Católica de Cuyo, Argentina
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Centro Gerociencias, Salud Mental y Metabolismo (GERO), Chile
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Clínica Alemana-Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile
Clínica Alemana-Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Fundación Valle del Lili, Colombia
Universidad Icesi, Colombia
Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Mexico
Instituto Peruano de Neurociencias, Peru
University of California, San Francisco, USA
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
Hospital Universitario San Ignacio, Colombia
Massachusetts General Hospital, USA
Harvard University, USA
University of California, San Francisco, USA
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad del Valle, Colombia
University of California San Diego, USA
Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, USA
Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, USA
King’s College London, UK
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
University of California, San Francisco, USA
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile

CONTACT
Get involved
Questions about the project? Get in touch with the research team.
Research team
Lead investigator
Professor Agustin Ibanez
Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin
Media enquiries
Thomas Deane
Stay connected
The ReDLat consortium Global Brain Health InstituteFollow this research
Get an email whenever we publish new findings on this project.
Join the conversation
If a voice recording could show that your brain seemed older than your age, would you want to know?
Should low-cost tools such as voice recordings be developed first for places where brain scans and blood tests are hard to get?
How would you feel about a computer analysing recordings of your voice to check on your health?












































