Authors:
Pedro Gómez-Vilda
1
;
Andrés Gómez-Rodellar
2
;
Daniel Palacios-Alonso
3
and
Athanasios Tsanas
2
Affiliations:
1
NeuSpeLab, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo, s/n, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain
;
2
Usher Institute, Medical School, University of Edinburgh, Old Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG, U.K.
;
3
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Campus de Móstoles, Tulipán, s/n, 28933 Móstoles, Madrid, Spain
Keyword(s):
Parkinson’s Disease, Speech Diadochokinetics, Hypokinetic Dysarthria.
Abstract:
Hypokinetic Dysarthria (HD) is a major debilitating symptom in the vast majority of people diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (PD). It has been traditionally evaluated using diadochokinetic exercises to estimate its degree of severity, among them, the fast repetition of monosyllables as [pa], [ta], and [ka] and multisyllable sequences as [pataka], [pakata], [badaga] and others alike. However, the real efficiency of these exercises in differentiating the participant behaviour as pathological or normative has not been investigated in depth. The aim of the present work is to explore the timely responsive performance of two of these exercises (a monosyllabic [ta] vs a multisyllabic [pataka]). A method to characterize statistically syllabic and inter-syllabic interval durations in the execution of these diadochokinetic exercises, based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov approximations and Jensen-Shannon Divergence has been used to assess the efficiency of both types of exercises. The results from the
evaluation of 24 gender-balanced participants (12 PD and 12 controls) show that the monosyllabic exercise does not seem to differentiate well, whereas the multisyllabic exercise has a better differentiation performance. These findings, although relatively preliminary due to the limited sample size, underline the need to carefully consider the battery of tests towards assessing HD.
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