Thies Tabea, Mücke Doris, Dano Richard, Barbe Michael T
Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital, University of Cologne, 50924 Cologne, Germany.
IfL Phonetics, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, 50931 Cologne, Germany.
Brain Sci. 2021 May 4;11(5):594. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11050594.
The present study investigates speech changes in Parkinson's disease on the acoustic and articulatory level with respect to prosodic prominence marking. To display movements of the underlying articulators, speech data from 16 patients with Parkinson's disease were recorded using electromagnetic articulography. Speech tasks focused on strategies of prominence marking. Patients' ability to encode prominence in the laryngeal and supra-laryngeal domain is tested in two conditions to examine the influence of motor performance on speech production further: without dopaminergic medication and with dopaminergic medication. The data reveal that patients with Parkinson's disease are able to highlight important information in both conditions. They maintain prominence relations across- and within-accentuation by adjusting prosodic markers, such as vowel duration and pitch modulation, while the acoustic vowel space remains the same. For differentiating across-accentuation, not only intensity but also all temporal and spatial parameters related to the articulatory tongue body movements during the production of vowels are modulated to signal prominence. In response to the levodopa intake, gross motor performance improved significantly by 42%. The improvement in gross motor performance was accompanied by an improvement in speech motor performance in terms of louder speech and shorter, larger and faster tongue body movements. The tongue body is more agile under levodopa increase, a fact that is not necessarily detectable on the acoustic level but important for speech therapy.
本研究从声学和发音层面，就韵律重音标记方面，调查帕金森病患者的言语变化。为了显示潜在发音器官的运动，使用电磁关节造影术记录了16名帕金森病患者的言语数据。言语任务聚焦于重音标记策略。在两种情况下测试患者在喉部和喉上区域编码重音的能力，以进一步检查运动表现对言语产生的影响：未服用多巴胺能药物和服用多巴胺能药物。数据显示，帕金森病患者在两种情况下都能够突出重要信息。他们通过调整韵律标记（如元音时长和音高调制）来维持跨重音和重音内的重音关系，而声学元音空间保持不变。为了区分跨重音，不仅强度，而且与元音发音过程中发音舌体运动相关的所有时间和空间参数都会被调制以表示重音。服用左旋多巴后，总体运动表现显著改善了42%。总体运动表现的改善伴随着言语运动表现的改善，表现为声音更大、舌体运动更短、幅度更大且更快。左旋多巴增加时舌体更灵活，这一事实在声学层面不一定能检测到，但对言语治疗很重要。
