Dysarthria

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

Primary Lateral Sclerosis Presenting With Focal Onset Spreading Through Contiguous Neuroanatomic Regions

Abstract: A 66-year-old woman complained of a 3-year history of left ankle focal spasticity. Brain MRI revealed subcortical white matter hyperintensity in the medial region of the right precentral gyrus. Subsequently, motor impairment spread proximally, to the contralateral lower limb and then to ipsilateral arm, ultimately resulting in a progressive asymmetric tetraparesis and a mild dysarthria. After a 4-year follow-up, a diagnosis of definite primary lateral sclerosis was established.1 Clinical progression was mirrored by corresponding spreading of the MRI hyperintensity through motor areas (Figure, A) and extensive microstructural damage of the corticospinal tract shown by diffusion tensor MRI tractography (Figure, B), consistently with a model of TDP-43 protein prion-like transmission through the complex 3D anatomy of the motor system.2

Assessing dysarthria using variability measures from audio recordings

Abstract: Classification and characterization of motor speech disorders (MSDs) is important from the viewpoint of diagnosis and treatment. Clinical diagnosis is primarily based on auditoryperceptual characteristics of perceived speech abnormalities, but is subject to unreliable clinical judgement and quantifi cation, and diffi cult to relate to the underlying pathophysiology. In this study we investigate whether it is possible to diagnose dysarthria based on measures of speech variability by using Functional Data Analysis (FDA) (Ramsay et al.,1996). A reliable quantifi cation of variability in speech can potentially reveal underlying motor control problems, enable early detection of sub-clinical speech abnormalities, and provide sensitive and quantifi able outcome measures that aid treatment strategies. FDA has been shown to be successful in investigating variability of kinematic movements obtained by lip displacement tracking, but may also be applied to other dimensions of speech, including amplitude envelopes and pitch and formant tracks. Anderson et al. (2008) used FDA to calculate spatial and temporal variability of amplitude envelopes of sentence repetitions produced by patients with hypokinetic and ataxic dysarthria and demonstrated that variability characteristics were infl uenced by dysarthria type.

The case of the lawyer's lugubrious language: dysarthria plus primary progressive aphasia or dysarthria plus dementia?

Abstract: A productive, intelligent, 60-year-old practicing attorney slowly begins to notice that the language that he has commanded throughout his life is beginning to become more difficult to produce, exacting its toll on his mental energy and emotional stability. His search for answers to his diminished "memory for words" leads him through the fetid ranks of traditional medicine and into the search for a differential diagnosis involving clinical neurology, neuropsychology, and speech-language pathology. Consistencies and conflicts in the signs and symptoms between the competing diagnoses raise theoretical and clinical classification issues. A course of treatment for aphasia provides evidence to support the diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia, but the development of concommitant spastic dysarthria and dysphagia challenge current wisdom about the underlying neuropathology of aphasia and support a diagnosis of early dementia. A selective but steady and rapid decline of abilities over the course of 2 years leads to the patient's death and autopsy, from which a neuropathologic analysis was to provide the "final" and "ultimate" diagnosis. But it doesn't!

The Effect of an Artificially Flattened Fundamental Frequency Contour on Intelligibility in Speakers with Dysarthria

Abstract: The Effect of an Artificially Flattened Fundamental Frequency Contour on Intelligibility in Speakers with Dysarthria Emily Elizabeth Redd Department of Communication Disorders, BYU Master of Science Prosody plays an important role in speech communication. Many individuals with motor speech disorders have decreased prosodic control and thus lower overall intelligibility. Few studies have examined the effect of a flattened prosodic contour on the intelligibility of dysarthric speech, and little is known about the role that listener gender plays in understanding disordered speech. The purpose of this study was to quantify the impact of artificial prosodic manipulation on the intelligibility of dysarthric speech as a function of the extent of fundamental frequency (F0) contour flattening. A further goal was to examine the influence of listener gender on intelligibility. Speech recordings from two speakers (one with mild dysarthria and one with severe dysarthria) were synthetically altered by reducing F0 variability by 50%, 75%, and 100%. Fifty listeners transcribed the sentences and rated the perceived difficulty of the task. Results of the study indicated that a flattened F0 contour led to decreases in the intelligibility of both speakers with dysarthria, both in terms of transcription accuracy and ratings of listener confidence. All altered conditions resulted in poorer intelligibility than the unaltered utterances. For the mild speaker, scores and ratings decreased predictably in proportion to the extent of F0 flattening, whereas for the severe speaker, there was not a steady decrease in intelligibility as the F0 was progressively flattened. The utterances were more intelligible to female than male listeners.