Formalized Assessment of Handwriting Deterioration Caused by Dementia

Abstract

Handwriting is a sensitive indicator of both cognitive and physical changes, making it a promising tool for the early detection of neurodegenerative conditions such as cognitive impairment (CI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Because dementia-related handwriting changes vary between individuals, a systematic and quantitative approach is essential. This study employs a robust analytical framework incorporating 41 handwriting and 3 linguistic features, previously shown strong discriminatory power to effectively differentiate individuals with CI/AD from healthy controls. The current work focuses on a longitudinal analysis of handwriting changes over time, using samples from 21 participants diagnosed with CI/AD. Each participant provided recent handwriting alongside samples written 10–20 years earlier. The analysis identifies the most common dementia-related handwriting changes and evaluates their statistical significance. These findings underscore handwriting analysis as a promising tool for detecting early signs of cognitive decline. This approach offers particular value in medical diagnostics, supporting timely intervention, and in forensic contexts, where handwriting changes may serve as critical evidence. Overall, the study highlights systematic handwriting analysis as a reliable, non-invasive, and accessible assessment tool.

Received: 5 March 2025 | Revised: 30 May 2025 | Accepted: 25 June 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution

Yury Chernov: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.