Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurological disorder that is characterized by a decay in global motor performance, manifest in tremor, abnormal gait, and dysarthria. PD dysarthria characteristics include monoloudness, pathological voice quality, and imprecise articulation. Standard treatment for relieving PD symptoms is the drug levodopa, but it is currently unknown how it affects speech. We investigated the effect of levodopa on the vowel space of 4 Dutch and 6 Slovenian PD participants. They recorded their speech on twenty occasions distributed over four days across 2-4 weeks. First and second formants of corner vowels [i-a-u] produced in isolated words were measured at acoustic midpoints of 4043 tokens. A vowel articulation index (VAI), a metric of vowel space dispersion,
was calculated for each speaker. VAI was not significantly affected by levodopa in either language, which may indicate that the motor control underlying vowel articulation is not as sensitive to levodopa as other motor symptoms.
was calculated for each speaker. VAI was not significantly affected by levodopa in either language, which may indicate that the motor control underlying vowel articulation is not as sensitive to levodopa as other motor symptoms.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences |
Subtitle of host publication | ICPhS2019 |
Editors | Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain, Paul Warren |
Place of Publication | Canberra |
Publisher | Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA) |
Pages | 1069-1073 |
Number of pages | 5 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780646800691 |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Event | International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (19th : 2019) - Melbourne, Australia Duration: 5 Aug 2019 → 9 Aug 2019 |
Conference
Conference | International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (19th : 2019) |
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Abbreviated title | ICPhS2019 |
Country/Territory | Australia |
City | Melbourne |
Period | 5/08/19 → 9/08/19 |
Keywords
- Parkinson's disease
- vowel production
- levodopa
- dysarthria
- vowel acoustics