Dysarthria

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

“Accent issue”: foreign accent syndrome following ischemic stroke

Abstract: Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is arare syndrome associated with altered speech rhythm and prosody, which listeners perceive as foreign; cerebrovascular accidents, tumors and multiple sclerosis are reported as possible causes of FAS. The pathophysiology of FAS is not yet understood. A 68-year-old Italian man was admitted to the EmergencyDepartment for non-fluent aphasia and dysarthria. Computed tomography (CT) scan did not show abnormalities; the patient was treated with systemic thrombolysis. A repeated brain CT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirmed an infarct in the left primary motor cortex and mild extension to cortico-subcortical frontal regions. In the following days he gradually improved, speaking Italian fluently with a typical German accent. In conclusion, FAS is a rare motor speech disorder, often related to cerebrovascular accidents involving critical regions in the dominant hemisphere. In addition, the present case adds further evidence to the role of the left primary motor cortex in modulation of prosody. In rare cases FAS can be the only sign of stroke or can appear after recovery from post-stroke aphasia.

Oral and Hand Movement Speeds are Associated with Expressive Language Ability in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

Abstract: This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities.

Improving Recognition of Dysarthric Speech Using Severity Based Tempo Adaptation

Abstract: Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder, characterized by slurred or slow speech resulting in low intelligibility. Automatic recognition of dysarthric speech is beneficial to enable people with dysarthria to use speech as a mode of interaction with electronic devices. In this paper we propose a mechanism to adapt the tempo of sonorant part of dysarthric speech to match that of normal speech, based on the severity of dysarthria. We show a significant improvement in recognition of tempo-adapted dysasrthic speech, using a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) - Hidden Markov Model (HMM) recognition system as well as a Deep neural network (DNN) - HMM based system. All evaluations were done on Universal Access Speech Corpus.

Hand Gestures: Perspectives and Preliminary Implications for Adults With Acquired Dysarthria

Abstract: Most communicators engage in some degree of hand gesturing while speaking. The purposes of the present paper are to review in detail the nature of hand gestures (gesticulations) in normal communica...