Dysarthria

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

Speech Impairments in Neurodegenerative Diseases/Psychiatric Illnesses

Abstract: Changes in speech and voice are characteristic of both neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. The acoustic analysis of speech production of several common disorders related to central nervous system dysfunction is summarized here. A brief introduction to the neurobiology of speech production illustrates how the cerebral structures and neurotransmitters involved in neurologic (e.g., Parkinson disease) and psychiatric (e.g., depression) disturbances contribute to specific speech alterations. A succinct overview of voice recording and data processing equipment is also provided.

Analysis of voice and speech performance in Parkinson’s disease: a promising tool for the monitoring of disease progression and differential diagnosis

Abstract: SUMMARY Abnormalities of voice and speech performance are common and are early features of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other hypokinetic rigid syndromes, such as progressive supranuclear palsy. The typical pattern of dysarthria in PD is characterized by reduced loudness and pitch variability, often in combination with abnormalities of voice, articulatory insufficiencies and irregularity of speech rate and rhythm. Recent preliminary investigations on the progression of dysarthria in the course of PD, and on the comparison of dysarthria between PD and progressive supranuclear palsy speakers, justify the assumption that analysis of speech may become a helpful tool for the monitoring of presumably nondopaminergic features and disease progression in PD and for the differential diagnoses of different parkinsonian syndromes.

The DesPho-APaDy Project: Developing an Acoustic-phonetic Characterization of Dysarthric Speech in French

Abstract: This paper presents the rationale, objectives and advances of an on-going project (the DesPho-APaDy project funded by the French National Agency of Research) which aims to provide a systematic and quantified description of French dysarthric speech, over a large population of patients and three dysarthria types (related to the parkinson's disease, the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease, and a pure cerebellar alteration). The two French corpora of dysarthric patients, from which the speech data have been selected for analysis purposes, are firstly described. Secondly, this paper discusses and outlines the requirement of a structured and organized computerized platform in order to store, organize and make accessible (for selected and protected usage) dysarthric speech corpora and associated patients’ clinical information (mostly disseminated in different locations: labs, hospitals, …). The design of both a computer database and a multi-field query interface is proposed for the clinical context. Finally, advances of the project related to the selection of the population used for the dysarthria analysis, the preprocessing of the speech files, their orthographic transcription and their automatic alignment are also presented.

The impact of art therapy on the intelligibility of speech in children with cerebral palsy.

Abstract: Background. Children with cerebral palsy (CP) frequently have dysarthria, which reduces the intelligibility of their speech and can seriously impede their psycho-social adjustment. Traditional "bottom-up" rehabilitation oriented directly on the articulatory apparatus is not always successful in helping these children to speak intelligibly. The authors have developed a program of art therapy with elements of logopedic therapy to model and stimulate perception and expression, including linguistic performance, which has proven in clinical to be a helpful "top-down" approach to helping these children to speak more early. Material and methods. Out of the population of CP children treated in the Cracow Rehabilitation Center's Art Therapy Workshop in the period 1994-2001, we identified 14 children, 9 boys and 5 girls, average age 15,3, who showed severe dysarthria at admission without other language or cognitive disturbances. Our retrospective study was based on recorder results from the Auditory Dysarthria Scale and standard neuropsychological tests for fluency of speech, administered routinely once each month during the 4-month art therapy program. Results. All the children in the study group showed some degree of improvement after art therapy in all tested parameters. On the Auditory Dysarthria Scale, the largest improvements were noted in overall intelligibility (p Conclusions. Art therapy with elements of logopedic therapy improves the ability of children with cerebral palsy to engage in purposeful behavior, including speech and language functions, especially intelligibility.