Dysarthria

About: Dysarthria is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2402 publications have been published within this topic receiving 56554 citations.

A comparative study of the relationship between dysarthria and verbal dyspraxia in adults and children

Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between the dysarthrias and verbal dyspraxia in adults and children, and examines these conditions with reference to current theories and a model. The empirical basis for the study described here was the examination in depth of the speech of six subjects, each of whom presented with neurological disorders of different origins: two adults, chosen to exemplify the acquired conditions of dysarthria and dyspraxia, and four children. The speech analyses used profiling techniques of segmental phonological and prosodic assessment, and electropalatographic (EPG) examination, and the profiles thus obtained were compared between subjects and across client groups. The hypothesis was that in-depth analyses would provide distinguishing characteristics between the two neurological conditions, such that the children with suspected developmental verbal dyspraxia would demonstrate differences from those with developmental dysarthria, and clear similarities to the dyspraxic adult. The ...

Lamotrigine therapy for paroxysmal dysarthria caused by multiple sclerosis: a case report.

Abstract: Paroxysmal dysarthria is a transient dysfunction in the initiation, control or coordination of speech characterized by sudden onset, stereotyped patterns and short duration, occurring many times during the day [1]. The combination of paroxysmal episodes of severe dysarthria and ataxia has rarely been reported in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and in other neurological diseases such a Beh1et’s and midbrain infarction [1–3]. We report a case of a patient with relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis (MS–RR) who showed paroxysmal dysarthria as the only manifestation of an acute brainstem relapse. Treatment with carbamazepine was not effective for this patient, but lamotrigine completely suppressed paroxysmal attacks. A 36-year-old woman with a 14-year history of clinically definite multiple sclerosis, free of relapses for about 1 year, presented to our clinic in January 2010 with episodes of severe dysarthria lasting a few seconds, occasionally accompanied by rising burning sensation. Initially, the episodes occurred five or six times a day; later, despite steroid treatment (intravenous methylprednisolone 500 mg/ day for 5 days), the episodes became more frequent, once every 2–5 min. Neurological examination between the attacks showed only residual signs from previous relapses with decreased paresthesia at lower limbs, brisk tendon reflexes and Babinski sign. EEG recording during the attacks showed no paroxysmal discharges (see video). A brain MRI revealed a new right paramedian midbrain lesion below the level of the red nucleus (Fig. 1a) with gadolinium enhancement (Fig 1b). Carbamazepine (orally, 600 mg/day for 10 days) was started with no improvement, while lamotrigine (orally, 100 mg/day) markedly improved paroxysmal dysarthria, resulting in an almost complete suppression of the attacks in about 2 weeks. Because the discontinuation of Lamotrigine led to an immediate recurrence of paroxysmal symptoms, the drug was administered again at the dose of 100 mg/day and the patient remained free from the paroxysmal episodes for a 10-month follow up. A new brain MRI performed 3 months after the beginning of dysarthria showed the disappearance of midbrain lesion enhancement (Fig. 1c). We described one MS patient with episodes of severe dysarthria as the only manifestation of an acute relapse. Brain MRI showed a new right paramedian midbrain lesion below the level of the red nucleus with gadolinium enhancement. In previous reports [1–4], paroxysmal dysarthria, with or without ataxia, has rarely been reported in MS patients and in other neurological diseases such a Beh1et’s and midbrain infarction. All described patients had in common a lower midbrain lesion below the level of the red nucleus, suggesting that an interruption of the cerebellothalamocortical pathway inducing parietal diaschisis and, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00415-011-5901-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Speech, language and swallowing impairments in functional neurological disorder: a scoping review

Abstract: Background Functional neurological disorder (FND) is common across healthcare settings. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders states that speech and swallowing symptoms can be present in FND. Despite this, there is a dearth of guidelines for speech and language therapists (SLTs) for this client group. Aims To address the following question in order to identify gaps for further research: What is known about speech, language and swallowing symptoms in patients with FND? Methods & procedures A scoping review was conducted. Six healthcare databases were searched for relevant literature: CINAHL PLUS, MEDLINE, ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health Professionals, Science Citation Index, Scopus, and PsychINFO. The following symptoms were excluded from the review: dysphonia, globus pharyngeus, dysfluency, foreign accent syndrome and oesophageal dysphagia. Main contribution A total of 63 papers were included in the final review; they ranged in date from 1953 to 2018. Case studies were the most frequent research method (n = 23, 37%). 'Psychogenic' was the term used most frequently (n = 24, 38%), followed by 'functional' (n = 21, 33%). Speech symptoms were reported most frequently (n = 41, 65%), followed by language impairments (n = 35, 56%) and dysphagia (n = 13, 21%). Only 11 publications comment on the involvement of SLTs. Eight papers report direct speech and language therapy input; however, none studied the effectiveness of speech and language therapy. Conclusions & implications Speech, language and swallowing symptoms do occur in patients with FND, yet it is a highly under-researched area. Further research is required to create a set of positive diagnostic criteria, gather accurate data on numbers of patients with FND and speech, language or swallowing symptoms, and to evaluate the effectiveness of direct speech and language therapy involvement.

Data Augmentation Using Virtual Microphone Array Synthesis and Multi-Resolution Feature Extraction for Isolated Word Dysarthric Speech Recognition

Abstract: Dysarthria is a speech-motor disorder that affects the articulatory systems inhibiting their speech communication efforts. To handle their communication problems, a speech recognition-based augmentative and alternative communication aid is used as an attractive alternative. However, successful development of an automatic speech recognition (ASR)-based aid depends on the availability of sufficient speech data for training. Building an ASR system for dysarthric speakers is difficult due to limited amount of training data and large inter-and-intra speaker variabilities. Using normal speaker's speech data for data augmentation or adaptation for low intelligible dysarthric speakers would be extremely challenging due to huge variation in acoustic characteristics between these two category of speakers. In the current article, a two-level data augmentation is performed on dysarthric speech based on virtual linear microphone array-based synthesis followed by multi-resolution feature extraction. With the augmented speech data, an isolated word hybrid DNN-HMM-based ASR system is trained using UA speech corpus and Tamil dysarthric speech corpus developed by the authors. Performance of the ASR system shows a reduced WER of up to 32.79%, 35.75% for low and very low intelligible speakers with dysarthria compared to recent works on data augmentation reported for dysarthric speech recognition.