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. VAI [13], 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
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. VAI [13], 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
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019 |
| Editors | Sasha Calhoun et al. |
| Publisher | Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc. |
| Pages | 1069-1073 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |