The current study examined the effect of different rate change approaches on speech movement patterns, including increasing and decreasing speaking rate volitionally, as well as with delayed auditory feedback (DAF). There were 10 participants, five male and five female, with a mean age of 25 years. All were typical speakers. Participants spoke the sentence “Don’t fight or pout over a toy car” under slow, fast and DAF speaking conditions. A total of 5 sensors were glued to each participant’s tongue, teeth, and lips. NDI Wave electromagnetic articulography recorded the articulatory movements from these sensors as the participants spoke. Metrics for the individual movement strokes, or articulatory gestures, were calculated based on the movement speed of the articulators during the target utterance. Ten tokens of the target utterance were analyzed for stroke count, stroke speed, duration, and hull area. Vertical movements of the tongue, jaw, lips, and lip aperture were used to calculate the spatiotemporal index to assess variability in speech movements across 10 sentence repetitions. Statistical analysis revealed that articulatory patterns changed significantly in slower speech. A speaker’s efforts to naturally decrease speech rate affected articulation patterns more than did the fast and DAF conditions. Findings from this study can be used as a foundation for future studies with dysarthric individuals, which may increase our understanding of mechanisms of change in the remediation of disordered speech.

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This thesis "Speech Therapy of Children with Developmental Dysarthria" deals with dysarthria and specific therapeutic methods that can be used in the context of speech therapy for children with this specific type of communication disorder. Part of the thesis includes the complete terminological definition of dysarthria etiology, its classification, its diagnosis and a detailed treatment of therapeutic methods. This thesis also includes supplemental methods, which is important for good child developmental and positively influences child speech. The main objective is to introduce potential therapeutic methods and subsequently analyze the frequency of their use in speech therapy. This thesis can be used as inspiration for speech therapists, who will lead therapy with children who have dysarthria.

This diploma thesis presents an analysis of speech impairments accompanying Parkinson's disease. This paper is divided into two sections - theoretical and practical. The first section gives a brief overview of available Czech and foreign literature and articles about this neurodegenerative disease. The section examines the questions of its aetiology, symptomatology, diagnostics and treatment. There can be found also a description of speech impairment connected with this disease, which is mainly hypokinetic and hyperkinetic dysarthria and dysphagia. It also deals with the problem of other limitations in communication such as facial bradykinesia or speech intelligibility. In the last chapter of theoretical part is described speech therapy and intervention with the emphasis on therapy, diagnostics and the effects of pharmacology an non-pharmacological treatment such as deep brain stimulation on speech performance in Parkinson's disease. The research part analyses speech impairment of people with Parkinson's disease. The aim of this diploma thesis was examination of this speech impairment using the Test 3F: Dysarthria profile and patient's own perception of this specific speech disorder. In this paper are presented eight case studies focusing on speech of clients with Parkinson's disease. The results...

Introdução: A miastenia gravis (MG) é uma doença autoimune caracterizada por diminuição da força nos músculos voluntários, que se agrava com o esforço, podendo evoluir com alterações de voz e deglutição. Objetivo: Caracterizar as manifestações laríngeas da MG. Métodos: Foi realizado um estudo transversal por meio da avaliação de 37 pacientes portadores de MG, no período de maio de 2015 a novembro de 2016. Os pacientes foram recrutados no Ambulatório de Neurologia do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo/SP. Além dos dados clínicos e demográficos, todos os pacientes foram analizados pelo Índice de Desvantagem Vocal-10 (IDV-10), análise perceptivo-auditiva da voz, videolaringoestroboscopia e videoendoscopia da deglutição. Resultados: Na avaliação de voz, foi identificada disfonia em 89,2% dos sujeitos, sendo 59,5% de grau discreto e 29,7% moderado a grave. A autopercepção da desvantagem vocal foi significativamente maior nos pacientes diagnosticados com algum grau de disfonia. Foram identificadas alterações anatômicas em 8 pacientes à videolaringoestroboscospia. Ao comparar o grau da doença com as variáveis contração faríngea e sensibilidade laríngea na VED, observou-se maior ocorrência nos sujeitos com doença mais avançada e comprometimento bulbar. A associação entre as alterações de sensibilidade laríngea e estase indicou que os pacientes com ausência de sensibilidade tiveram estase para saliva, líquido e principalmente para purê e sólido. Conclusões: Portadores de MG apresentam alterações de voz e deglutição relacionadas à doença. A disfonia causa um impacto na vida do paciente com diagnóstico de MG. As alterções da deglutição estiveram presentes em pacientes com acometimento generalizado e maior evolução da doença / Introduction: Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease characterized by a reduction in the strength of the voluntary muscles, aggravated by effort, with the possibility of developing with voice and deglutition disorders. Objective: Characterize the laryngeal manifestations of MG. Methods: A tranversal study was carried out by evaluating 37 patients with MG in the period between May 2015 and November 2016. Patients were recruited in the Neurology outpatient center at the Hospital das Clínicas, \"Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo\". Besides clinical and demographic data, all patients were analyzed according to the Vocal Disadvantage Index-10 (VDI-10), auditory-perceptual voice analysis, videolaryngostroboscopy and videoendoscopy of swallowing. Results: In the voice evaluation, dysphonia was identified in 89.2% of patients, 59.5% with a discreet degree and 29.7% from moderate to severe. Self-perception of the vocal disadvantage was significantly greater in patients diagnosed with some degree of dysphonia. Anatomical changes were identified in 8 patients through viodeolaryngostroboscospy. When comparing the degree of the disease with the variables pharyngeal contraction and laryngeal sensitivity in the VED, a greater incidence in patients with a more advanced disease and bulbar involvement was noticed. The association between the changes in laryngeal sensitivity and stasis showed that patients with a lack of sensitivity had stasis for saliva, liquid and mainly for purée and solids. Conclusions: MG patients present changes in voice and deglutition related to the disease. Dysphonia causes a great impact in the life of the patient diagnosed with MG. Changes in deglutition were present in patients with generalized involvement and greater progression of the disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative illness whose cardinal symptoms include rigidity, tremor, and slowness of movement. In addition to its widely recognized effects PD can have a profound effect on speech and voice.The speech symptoms most commonly demonstrated by patients with PD are reduced vocal loudness, monopitch, disruptions of voice quality, and abnormally fast rate of speech. This cluster of speech symptoms is often termed Hypokinetic Dysarthria.The disease can be difficult to diagnose accurately, especially in its early stages, due to this reason, automatic techniques based on Artificial Intelligence should increase the diagnosing accuracy and to help the doctors make better decisions. The aim of the thesis work is to predict the PD based on the audio files collected from various patients.Audio files are preprocessed in order to attain the features.The preprocessed data contains 23 attributes and 195 instances. On an average there are six voice recordings per person, By using data compression technique such as Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) number of instances can be minimized, after data compression, attribute selection is done using several WEKA build in methods such as ChiSquared, GainRatio, Infogain after identifying the important attributes, we evaluate attributes one by one by using stepwise regression.Based on the selected attributes we process in WEKA by using cost sensitive classifier with various algorithms like MultiPass LVQ, Logistic Model Tree(LMT), K-Star.The classified results shows on an average 80%.By using this features 95% approximate classification of PD is acheived.This shows that using the audio dataset, PD could be predicted with a higher level of accuracy.

The purpose of the research presented here was to systematically investigate the role of speech perception on speech production in speakers of different ages and those with PD and hypokinetic dysarthria. For this, the experimental designs of auditory perturbation and mimicry were chosen. The initial research phase established that the magnitude of compensation to auditory vowel perturbation was reduced in 54 speakers of New Zealand English (NZE) when compared to previous studies conducted with speakers of American (AE) and Canadian English (CE). A number of factors were studied to determine possible predictors of compensation and distinguish between potential changes associated with ageing. However, no predictors of compensation were found for the overall group. Post-hoc analyses established an increased variability in response patterns in NZE when compared to previous studies of AE and CE. Subsequent follow-up analyses focused on the response-dependent categories of (1) big compensators, (2) compensators, (3) big followers, and (4) followers. Linear mixed-effect modelling revealed that in big compensators, the magnitude of compensation was greater in speakers who exhibited larger F1 baseline standard deviation and greater F1 vowel distances of HEAD relative to HEED and HAD. F1 baseline standard deviation was found to have a similar predictive value for the group of compensators. No predictors of compensation were found for the other two subgroups. Phase two was set up as a continuation of phase one and examined whether a subset of 16 speakers classified as big compensators adapted to auditory vowel perturbation. Linear mixed-effect modelling revealed that in the absence of auditory feedback alterations, big compensators maintained their revised speech motor commands for a short period of time until a process of de-adaptation was initiated. No predictors of adaptation were found for the group. Due to the unexpected results from the first two research phases indicating a dominant weighting of somatosensory feedback in NZE compared to auditory-perceptual influences, a different experimental paradigm was selected for phase three - mimicry. The purpose of this study was to determine whether eight speakers with PD and dysarthria and eight age-matched healthy controls (HC) are able to effectively integrate speech perception and speech production when attempting to match an acoustic target. Results revealed that all speakers were able to modify their speech production to approximate the model speaker but the acoustic dimensions of their speech did not move significantly closer to the target over the three mimicry attempts. Although speakers with moderate levels of dysarthria exhibited greater acoustic distances (except for the dimension of pitch variation), neither the perceptual nor the acoustic analyses found significant differences in mimicry behaviour across the two groups. Overall, these findings were considered preliminary evidence that speech perception and speech production can at least to some extent be effectively integrated to induce error-correction mechanisms and subsequent speech motor learning in these speakers with PD and dysarthria.

Introdução: A miastenia gravis (MG) é uma doença autoimune caracterizada por diminuição da força nos músculos voluntários, que se agrava com o esforço, podendo evoluir com alterações de voz e deglutição. Objetivo: Caracterizar as manifestações laríngeas da MG. Métodos: Foi realizado um estudo transversal por meio da avaliação de 37 pacientes portadores de MG, no período de maio de 2015 a novembro de 2016. Os pacientes foram recrutados no Ambulatório de Neurologia do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo/SP. Além dos dados clínicos e demográficos, todos os pacientes foram analizados pelo Índice de Desvantagem Vocal-10 (IDV-10), análise perceptivo-auditiva da voz, videolaringoestroboscopia e videoendoscopia da deglutição. Resultados: Na avaliação de voz, foi identificada disfonia em 89,2% dos sujeitos, sendo 59,5% de grau discreto e 29,7% moderado a grave. A autopercepção da desvantagem vocal foi significativamente maior nos pacientes diagnosticados com algum grau de disfonia. Foram identificadas alterações anatômicas em 8 pacientes à videolaringoestroboscospia. Ao comparar o grau da doença com as variáveis contração faríngea e sensibilidade laríngea na VED, observou-se maior ocorrência nos sujeitos com doença mais avançada e comprometimento bulbar. A associação entre as alterações de sensibilidade laríngea e estase indicou que os pacientes com ausência de sensibilidade tiveram estase para saliva, líquido e principalmente para purê e sólido. Conclusões: Portadores de MG apresentam alterações de voz e deglutição relacionadas à doença. A disfonia causa um impacto na vida do paciente com diagnóstico de MG. As alterções da deglutição estiveram presentes em pacientes com acometimento generalizado e maior evolução da doença / Introduction: Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease characterized by a reduction in the strength of the voluntary muscles, aggravated by effort, with the possibility of developing with voice and deglutition disorders. Objective: Characterize the laryngeal manifestations of MG. Methods: A tranversal study was carried out by evaluating 37 patients with MG in the period between May 2015 and November 2016. Patients were recruited in the Neurology outpatient center at the Hospital das Clínicas, \"Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo\". Besides clinical and demographic data, all patients were analyzed according to the Vocal Disadvantage Index-10 (VDI-10), auditory-perceptual voice analysis, videolaryngostroboscopy and videoendoscopy of swallowing. Results: In the voice evaluation, dysphonia was identified in 89.2% of patients, 59.5% with a discreet degree and 29.7% from moderate to severe. Self-perception of the vocal disadvantage was significantly greater in patients diagnosed with some degree of dysphonia. Anatomical changes were identified in 8 patients through viodeolaryngostroboscospy. When comparing the degree of the disease with the variables pharyngeal contraction and laryngeal sensitivity in the VED, a greater incidence in patients with a more advanced disease and bulbar involvement was noticed. The association between the changes in laryngeal sensitivity and stasis showed that patients with a lack of sensitivity had stasis for saliva, liquid and mainly for purée and solids. Conclusions: MG patients present changes in voice and deglutition related to the disease. Dysphonia causes a great impact in the life of the patient diagnosed with MG. Changes in deglutition were present in patients with generalized involvement and greater progression of the disease

This thesis deals with speech therapy for people with acquired brain injury. The theoretical part consists of three chapters that acquaint readers with the theoretical framework necessary to understand the range of problems examined. It approximates the issue of origin and effects of this disease and refers to attitude in therapy that can be realized to people with this impairment. The research part of the work puts a goal to analyze the possibilities of speech therapy of selected persons with aphasia. The resulting data agree on the fact that for effective speech therapy is necessary on the one hand an individual approach but also motivation of patient is very important. The thesis also includes creating a custom set of exercises which has confirmed the effectivness of the development of cognitive functions in persons with aphasia. The empirical part is based on the qualitative research which was realized by techniques of participant observing, interviewing, questionnaire survey, analysing progress and outcomes of activities, documentation and literature.

This work deals with analysis of phonation in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Approximately 90% of patients with Parkinson’s disease suffer from speech motor dysfunction called hypokinetic dysarthria. System for Parkinson’s disease analysis from speech signals is proposed and several types of features are examined. Czech Parkinson’s speech database called PARCZ is used for classification. This dataset consists of 84 PD patients and 49 healthy controls. Results are evaluated in two ways. Firstly, features are individually analysed by Spearman correlation, mutual information and Mann-Whitney U test. Classification is based on random forests along with leave-one-out validation. Secondly, SFFS algorithm is employed for feature selection in order to get the best classification result. Proposed system is tested for each gender individually and both genders together as well. Best result for both genders together is expressed by accuracy 89,47 %, sensitivity 91,67% and specificity 85,71 %. Results of this work showed that the most important vowel realizations for phonation analysis are sustained vowels pronounced with maximum or minimum intensity (not whispering).