Geralyn Schulz | The George Washington University (original) (raw)
Papers by Geralyn Schulz
Journal of Fluency Disorders, 1994
Oral Presentation: 15 min. A congenital speech disorder resembling cluttering was studied in adul... more Oral Presentation: 15 min. A congenital speech disorder resembling cluttering was studied in adulthood in parents and siblings of a family. Their speech contained inconsistent phonemic errors, with omitted morphemes and word truncations. A quantitative study of speech, language, singing, short-term memory, and melodic recognition confirmed a very specific disorder in the affected family members. The pattern of deficits suggested a morphophonemic disorder affecting speech, reading, and writing, and associated with unusual melodic and singing abnormalities. The pattern of occurrence in the family was suggestive of an X-linked disorder, since only the males had the full expression of the disorder.
Journal of Medical Speech-language Pathology, 2011
Measures of language production (e.g., informativeness, cohesion) could further our understanding... more Measures of language production (e.g., informativeness, cohesion) could further our understanding of the cognitive-linguistic abilities of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and guide treatment focused on improving the overall communication ability. The current study measured correct information units (CIUs), total words, cohesion markers, content units (CUs), interpretive (CUis), and lexical efficiency in narrative (i.e., Cookie Theft and Cat Story) and conversational language production before and after unilateral posteroventral pallidotomy (UPVP). Twenty-four adults (average age, 64 years) with PD were tested: 13 had left PVP (8 men; 5 women), and 11 had right PVP (6 men; 5 women). No significant differences between pre- and post-UPVP or between left and right UPVP were found for these measures of language. Research regarding how the globus pallidus may or may not be involved in specific language skills and functional language tasks could inform the use of functional neurosurgery to treat patients with PD. Copyright
Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos, 2012
Variability in speech features of Parkinsonians has been described in studies on Parkinsonism. Th... more Variability in speech features of Parkinsonians has been described in studies on Parkinsonism. The purpose of this study was to investigate some factories involved in this variability, specifically in pause duration. Speech simples containing pauses were extracted from spontaneous conversations of two male Brazilian Parkinsonians. Four hundred twenty four pauses (subject one = 130; subject two = 294) were collected, measured and classified according to: (1) degree of duration (very short, short, middle, long and very long); (2) position at the beginning (initial) or in the development (internal) of the subject’s conversational turn; and (3) presence of silence only (unfilled), sound (filled) and combinations between silence and sound (mixed). Great variability in pause duration occurred in both inter and intrasubjects. Except for internal middle pauses, subject one had shorter mean values in pause duration. Filled pauses had shorter mean duration for the two subjects when compared ...
Neurorehabilitation, 1997
A speech production impairment can occur following damage to either the left or right hemisphere.... more A speech production impairment can occur following damage to either the left or right hemisphere. The nature of the impairment, however, differs depending on which hemisphere is damaged and within the left hemisphere, whether the damage is to the anterior or posterior language areas. This paper reviews the recent literature on the types of speech production impairments that follow damage to the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Damage to the left hemisphere anterior language area causes primarily a phonetic impairment, i.e. a deficit in executing the articulatory maneuvers of sound production with a preserved ability to select the correct sound. Damage to the left hemisphere posterior language area causes primarily a phonological impairment, i.e. a deficit in the correct selection of a sound with an intact ability to implement the articulatory maneuvers for that incorrect sound. Damage to the right hemisphere can cause a speech production problem to the prosodic aspects of language. These differences have direct implications for the theraputic remediation of these speech production impairments.
Journal of Medical Speech-language Pathology, 2010
The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Par... more The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and to examine the effects of these treatments on speech. Treatment methods reviewed include speech therapy, pharmacological, and surgical. Re-search from the 1950s through the 1970s had not demonstrated significant improvements following speech therapy. Recent research has shown that speech therapy (when persons with PD are optimally medicated) has proven to be the most efficacious therapeutic method for improving voice and speech function. Pharmacological methods of treatment in isolation do not appear to significantly improve voice and speech function in PD across research studies. Surgical treatment methods including pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation may be significant treatment options which improve voice and speech function in some per-sons with PD. Possible explanations for the differential responses to treatment are dis-cussed. Future studies should inv...
Brain Sciences
The majority of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience both prosodic changes (reduced vo... more The majority of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience both prosodic changes (reduced vocal volume, reduced pitch range) and articulatory changes (imprecise articulation) that often limit speech intelligibility and may contribute to significant declines in quality of life. We conducted a randomized control trial comparing two intensive treatments, voice (LSVT LOUD) or articulation (LSVT ARTIC) to assess single word intelligibility in the presence of background noise (babble and mall). Participants (64 PD and 20 Healthy) read words from the diagnostic rhyme test (DRT), an ANSI Standard for measuring intelligibility of speech, before and after one month (treatment or no treatment). Teams of trained listeners blindly rated the data. Speech intelligibility of words in the presence of both noise conditions improved in PD participants who had LSVT LOUD compared to the groups that had LSVT ARTIC or no treatment. Intensive speech treatment targeting prominent prosodic variables in ...
Journal of Medical Speech Language Pathology, Mar 1, 2010
Oral presentation Preferred but will accept either Oral or Poster Presentation Founded in 1979, f... more Oral presentation Preferred but will accept either Oral or Poster Presentation Founded in 1979, for the development, manufacture and distribution of the electromagnetic measurement systems Articulograph AG100 and AG500, systems for visualizing, registering and analyzing speech movement inside the mouth.
Botulinum and Tetanus Neurotoxins, 1993
Journal of Communication Disorders, 2000
The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Par... more The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Parkinson's Disease (PD) and to examine the effects of these treatments on speech. Treatment methods reviewed include speech therapy, pharmacological, and surgical. Research from the 1950s through the 1970s had not demonstrated significant improvements following speech therapy. Recent research has shown that speech therapy (when persons with PD are optimally medicated) has proven to be the most efficacious therapeutic method for improving voice and speech function. Pharmacological methods of treatment in isolation do not appear to significantly improve voice and speech function in PD across research studies. Surgical treatment methods including pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation may be significant treatment options which improve voice and speech function in some persons with PD. Possible explanations for the differential responses to treatment are discussed. Future studies should investigate the effects of combined treatment approaches. Perhaps the combination of pharmacological, surgical and speech treatment will prove superior to treatments combining pharmacological and surgical or pharmacological and speech therapy in improving the communication abilities of persons with PD. © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.
Clinical Linguistics Phonetics, 2001
RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...
The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal : official publication of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association, 2005
To determine the immediate and longer-term effect(s) on tongue movement following the placement o... more To determine the immediate and longer-term effect(s) on tongue movement following the placement of an experimental opening through a palatal obturator (replicate of subject's prosthesis) worn by an adult male with an unrepaired cleft of the hard and soft palate. Tongue movements associated with an anterior experimental opening of 20 mm(2) were examined under three conditions: a control condition in which the subject wore the experimental obturator completely occluded, a condition immediately after drilling the experimental openings through the obturator, and a condition after 5 days in which the subject wore the experimental obturator with the experimental opening. An Electromagnetic Articulograph was used for obtaining tongue movements during speech. The findings partly revealed that the immediate introduction of a perturbation to the speech system (experimental fistula) had a temporary effect on tongue movement. After sustained perturbation (for 5 days), the system normalized ...
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 1999
The purpose of this study was to determine whether cerebellar pathology interferes with motor lea... more The purpose of this study was to determine whether cerebellar pathology interferes with motor learning for either speech or novel tasks. Practice effects were contrasted between persons with cerebellar cortical atrophy (CCA) and control participants on previously learned real speech, nonsense speech, and novel nonspeech oral-movement tasks. Studies of limb motor learning suggested that control participants would evidence reduced variability, increased speed of movement, and reduced movement amplitude with practice as compared with the CCA group. No significant differences were found between the real- and nonsense-speech tasks. For both speech tasks, although neither group reduced their movement variability with practice, both groups significantly reduced jaw closing displacement and velocity with practice. For the novel nonspeech oral-movement task, no change with practice was observed in either group in terms of variability, amplitude, or peak velocity. No effects of cerebellar pat...
The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology, 1995
Sensorimotor responses to repeated electrical stimulation of the superior laryngeal nerve were co... more Sensorimotor responses to repeated electrical stimulation of the superior laryngeal nerve were compared in 8 patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) and 11 normal controls to determine if adductor response disinhibition occurred in ADSD. Pairs of electrical pulses were presented at interstimulus intervals varying from 100 to 5,000 milliseconds (ms). Three responses were measured in thyroarytenoid muscles: ipsilateral R1 responses at 17 ms and ipsilateral and contralateral R2 responses between 60 and 75 ms. Conditioned response characteristics, the percent occurrence and percentage amplitude of initial responses, were measures of response inhibition. As a group, the patients had reduced response inhibition: their conditioned ipsilateral R1 response amplitudes were increased, as was the frequency of their conditioned contralateral muscle responses (p < or = .002) compared to normal. However, the patients' initial responses were normal in latency and frequency characte...
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 1999
Pallidotomy surgery, lesioning the globus pallidus internal, has been performed to alleviate Park... more Pallidotomy surgery, lesioning the globus pallidus internal, has been performed to alleviate Parkinsonian symptoms and drug-induced dyskinesias. Improvements in limb motor function have been reported in recent years following pallidotomy surgery. The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine the effect of pallidotomy surgery on select voice and speech characteristics of 6 patients with Parkinson's disease. Acoustic measures were analyzed pre-pallidotomy surgery and again at 3 months following surgery. Preliminary findings indicated that all participants demonstrated positive changes in at least one acoustic measure; 2 of the participants consistently demonstrated positive changes in phonatory and articulatory measures, whereas 3 participants did not consistently demonstrate positive changes postsurgery. The results are discussed relative to the differential effects observed across participants.
Journal of Parkinson's disease, 2012
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson&... more Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but may produce a worsening of speech and language performance at rates and amplitudes typically selected in clinical practice. The possibility that these dissociated effects might be modulated by selective stimulation of left and right STN has never been systematically investigated. To address this issue, we analyzed motor, speech and language functions of 12 patients implanted with bilateral stimulators configured for optimal motor responses. Behavioral responses were quantified under four stimulator conditions: bilateral DBS, right-only DBS, left-only DBS and no DBS. Under bilateral and left-only DBS conditions, our results exhibited a significant improvement in motor symptoms but worsening of speech and language. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature demonstrating that bilateral STN DBS compromises speech and language function and suggests that th...
The Journal of Physiology, 2007
Poletto, Christopher J., Laura P. Verdun, Robert Strominger, and Christy L. Ludlow. Correspondenc... more Poletto, Christopher J., Laura P. Verdun, Robert Strominger, and Christy L. Ludlow. Correspondence between laryngeal vocal fold movement and muscle activity during speech and nonspeech gestures. To better understand the role of each of the laryngeal muscles in producing vocal fold movement, activation of these muscles was correlated with laryngeal movement during different tasks such as sniff, cough or throat clear, and speech syllable production. Four muscles [the posterior cricoarytenoid, lateral cricoarytenoid, cricothyroid (CT), and thyroarytenoid (TA)] were recorded with bipolar hooked wire electrodes placed bilaterally in four normal subjects. A nasoendoscope was used to record vocal fold movement while simultaneously recording muscle activity. Muscle activation level was correlated with ipsilateral vocal fold angle for vocal fold opening and closing. Pearson correlation coefficients and their statistical significance were computed for each trial. Significant effects of muscle (P Յ 0.0005) and task (P ϭ 0.034) were found on the r (transformed to Fisher's ZЈ) values. All of the posterior cricoarytenoid recordings related significantly with vocal opening, whereas CT activity was significantly correlated with opening only during sniff. The TA and lateral cricoarytenoid activities were significantly correlated with vocal fold closing during cough. During speech, the CT and TA activity correlated with both opening and closing. Laryngeal muscle patterning to produce vocal fold movement differed across tasks; reciprocal muscle activity only occurred on cough, whereas speech and sniff often involved simultaneous contraction of muscle antagonists. In conclusion, different combinations of muscle activation are used for biomechanical control of vocal fold opening and closing movements during respiratory, airway protection, and speech tasks.
Neuropsychologia, 1989
To determine if Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have increasing difficulty as speech tasks beco... more To determine if Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have increasing difficulty as speech tasks become longer or more complex, the timing and accuracy of isolated syllables and repeated sequences ofsyllables were studied. Acoustic measures of PD patients' syllables were similarly impaired relative to normal controls for both isolated and repeated syllable sequences. Listeners' identification scores were equally high for both types of productions.
Journal of Fluency Disorders, 1994
Oral Presentation: 15 min. A congenital speech disorder resembling cluttering was studied in adul... more Oral Presentation: 15 min. A congenital speech disorder resembling cluttering was studied in adulthood in parents and siblings of a family. Their speech contained inconsistent phonemic errors, with omitted morphemes and word truncations. A quantitative study of speech, language, singing, short-term memory, and melodic recognition confirmed a very specific disorder in the affected family members. The pattern of deficits suggested a morphophonemic disorder affecting speech, reading, and writing, and associated with unusual melodic and singing abnormalities. The pattern of occurrence in the family was suggestive of an X-linked disorder, since only the males had the full expression of the disorder.
Journal of Medical Speech-language Pathology, 2011
Measures of language production (e.g., informativeness, cohesion) could further our understanding... more Measures of language production (e.g., informativeness, cohesion) could further our understanding of the cognitive-linguistic abilities of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and guide treatment focused on improving the overall communication ability. The current study measured correct information units (CIUs), total words, cohesion markers, content units (CUs), interpretive (CUis), and lexical efficiency in narrative (i.e., Cookie Theft and Cat Story) and conversational language production before and after unilateral posteroventral pallidotomy (UPVP). Twenty-four adults (average age, 64 years) with PD were tested: 13 had left PVP (8 men; 5 women), and 11 had right PVP (6 men; 5 women). No significant differences between pre- and post-UPVP or between left and right UPVP were found for these measures of language. Research regarding how the globus pallidus may or may not be involved in specific language skills and functional language tasks could inform the use of functional neurosurgery to treat patients with PD. Copyright
Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos, 2012
Variability in speech features of Parkinsonians has been described in studies on Parkinsonism. Th... more Variability in speech features of Parkinsonians has been described in studies on Parkinsonism. The purpose of this study was to investigate some factories involved in this variability, specifically in pause duration. Speech simples containing pauses were extracted from spontaneous conversations of two male Brazilian Parkinsonians. Four hundred twenty four pauses (subject one = 130; subject two = 294) were collected, measured and classified according to: (1) degree of duration (very short, short, middle, long and very long); (2) position at the beginning (initial) or in the development (internal) of the subject’s conversational turn; and (3) presence of silence only (unfilled), sound (filled) and combinations between silence and sound (mixed). Great variability in pause duration occurred in both inter and intrasubjects. Except for internal middle pauses, subject one had shorter mean values in pause duration. Filled pauses had shorter mean duration for the two subjects when compared ...
Neurorehabilitation, 1997
A speech production impairment can occur following damage to either the left or right hemisphere.... more A speech production impairment can occur following damage to either the left or right hemisphere. The nature of the impairment, however, differs depending on which hemisphere is damaged and within the left hemisphere, whether the damage is to the anterior or posterior language areas. This paper reviews the recent literature on the types of speech production impairments that follow damage to the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Damage to the left hemisphere anterior language area causes primarily a phonetic impairment, i.e. a deficit in executing the articulatory maneuvers of sound production with a preserved ability to select the correct sound. Damage to the left hemisphere posterior language area causes primarily a phonological impairment, i.e. a deficit in the correct selection of a sound with an intact ability to implement the articulatory maneuvers for that incorrect sound. Damage to the right hemisphere can cause a speech production problem to the prosodic aspects of language. These differences have direct implications for the theraputic remediation of these speech production impairments.
Journal of Medical Speech-language Pathology, 2010
The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Par... more The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and to examine the effects of these treatments on speech. Treatment methods reviewed include speech therapy, pharmacological, and surgical. Re-search from the 1950s through the 1970s had not demonstrated significant improvements following speech therapy. Recent research has shown that speech therapy (when persons with PD are optimally medicated) has proven to be the most efficacious therapeutic method for improving voice and speech function. Pharmacological methods of treatment in isolation do not appear to significantly improve voice and speech function in PD across research studies. Surgical treatment methods including pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation may be significant treatment options which improve voice and speech function in some per-sons with PD. Possible explanations for the differential responses to treatment are dis-cussed. Future studies should inv...
Brain Sciences
The majority of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience both prosodic changes (reduced vo... more The majority of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience both prosodic changes (reduced vocal volume, reduced pitch range) and articulatory changes (imprecise articulation) that often limit speech intelligibility and may contribute to significant declines in quality of life. We conducted a randomized control trial comparing two intensive treatments, voice (LSVT LOUD) or articulation (LSVT ARTIC) to assess single word intelligibility in the presence of background noise (babble and mall). Participants (64 PD and 20 Healthy) read words from the diagnostic rhyme test (DRT), an ANSI Standard for measuring intelligibility of speech, before and after one month (treatment or no treatment). Teams of trained listeners blindly rated the data. Speech intelligibility of words in the presence of both noise conditions improved in PD participants who had LSVT LOUD compared to the groups that had LSVT ARTIC or no treatment. Intensive speech treatment targeting prominent prosodic variables in ...
Journal of Medical Speech Language Pathology, Mar 1, 2010
Oral presentation Preferred but will accept either Oral or Poster Presentation Founded in 1979, f... more Oral presentation Preferred but will accept either Oral or Poster Presentation Founded in 1979, for the development, manufacture and distribution of the electromagnetic measurement systems Articulograph AG100 and AG500, systems for visualizing, registering and analyzing speech movement inside the mouth.
Botulinum and Tetanus Neurotoxins, 1993
Journal of Communication Disorders, 2000
The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Par... more The purpose of this review was to examine the different treatment approaches for persons with Parkinson's Disease (PD) and to examine the effects of these treatments on speech. Treatment methods reviewed include speech therapy, pharmacological, and surgical. Research from the 1950s through the 1970s had not demonstrated significant improvements following speech therapy. Recent research has shown that speech therapy (when persons with PD are optimally medicated) has proven to be the most efficacious therapeutic method for improving voice and speech function. Pharmacological methods of treatment in isolation do not appear to significantly improve voice and speech function in PD across research studies. Surgical treatment methods including pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation may be significant treatment options which improve voice and speech function in some persons with PD. Possible explanations for the differential responses to treatment are discussed. Future studies should investigate the effects of combined treatment approaches. Perhaps the combination of pharmacological, surgical and speech treatment will prove superior to treatments combining pharmacological and surgical or pharmacological and speech therapy in improving the communication abilities of persons with PD. © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.
Clinical Linguistics Phonetics, 2001
RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...
The Cleft palate-craniofacial journal : official publication of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association, 2005
To determine the immediate and longer-term effect(s) on tongue movement following the placement o... more To determine the immediate and longer-term effect(s) on tongue movement following the placement of an experimental opening through a palatal obturator (replicate of subject's prosthesis) worn by an adult male with an unrepaired cleft of the hard and soft palate. Tongue movements associated with an anterior experimental opening of 20 mm(2) were examined under three conditions: a control condition in which the subject wore the experimental obturator completely occluded, a condition immediately after drilling the experimental openings through the obturator, and a condition after 5 days in which the subject wore the experimental obturator with the experimental opening. An Electromagnetic Articulograph was used for obtaining tongue movements during speech. The findings partly revealed that the immediate introduction of a perturbation to the speech system (experimental fistula) had a temporary effect on tongue movement. After sustained perturbation (for 5 days), the system normalized ...
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR, 1999
The purpose of this study was to determine whether cerebellar pathology interferes with motor lea... more The purpose of this study was to determine whether cerebellar pathology interferes with motor learning for either speech or novel tasks. Practice effects were contrasted between persons with cerebellar cortical atrophy (CCA) and control participants on previously learned real speech, nonsense speech, and novel nonspeech oral-movement tasks. Studies of limb motor learning suggested that control participants would evidence reduced variability, increased speed of movement, and reduced movement amplitude with practice as compared with the CCA group. No significant differences were found between the real- and nonsense-speech tasks. For both speech tasks, although neither group reduced their movement variability with practice, both groups significantly reduced jaw closing displacement and velocity with practice. For the novel nonspeech oral-movement task, no change with practice was observed in either group in terms of variability, amplitude, or peak velocity. No effects of cerebellar pat...
The Annals of otology, rhinology, and laryngology, 1995
Sensorimotor responses to repeated electrical stimulation of the superior laryngeal nerve were co... more Sensorimotor responses to repeated electrical stimulation of the superior laryngeal nerve were compared in 8 patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) and 11 normal controls to determine if adductor response disinhibition occurred in ADSD. Pairs of electrical pulses were presented at interstimulus intervals varying from 100 to 5,000 milliseconds (ms). Three responses were measured in thyroarytenoid muscles: ipsilateral R1 responses at 17 ms and ipsilateral and contralateral R2 responses between 60 and 75 ms. Conditioned response characteristics, the percent occurrence and percentage amplitude of initial responses, were measures of response inhibition. As a group, the patients had reduced response inhibition: their conditioned ipsilateral R1 response amplitudes were increased, as was the frequency of their conditioned contralateral muscle responses (p < or = .002) compared to normal. However, the patients' initial responses were normal in latency and frequency characte...
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 1999
Pallidotomy surgery, lesioning the globus pallidus internal, has been performed to alleviate Park... more Pallidotomy surgery, lesioning the globus pallidus internal, has been performed to alleviate Parkinsonian symptoms and drug-induced dyskinesias. Improvements in limb motor function have been reported in recent years following pallidotomy surgery. The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine the effect of pallidotomy surgery on select voice and speech characteristics of 6 patients with Parkinson's disease. Acoustic measures were analyzed pre-pallidotomy surgery and again at 3 months following surgery. Preliminary findings indicated that all participants demonstrated positive changes in at least one acoustic measure; 2 of the participants consistently demonstrated positive changes in phonatory and articulatory measures, whereas 3 participants did not consistently demonstrate positive changes postsurgery. The results are discussed relative to the differential effects observed across participants.
Journal of Parkinson's disease, 2012
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson&... more Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus improves the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but may produce a worsening of speech and language performance at rates and amplitudes typically selected in clinical practice. The possibility that these dissociated effects might be modulated by selective stimulation of left and right STN has never been systematically investigated. To address this issue, we analyzed motor, speech and language functions of 12 patients implanted with bilateral stimulators configured for optimal motor responses. Behavioral responses were quantified under four stimulator conditions: bilateral DBS, right-only DBS, left-only DBS and no DBS. Under bilateral and left-only DBS conditions, our results exhibited a significant improvement in motor symptoms but worsening of speech and language. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature demonstrating that bilateral STN DBS compromises speech and language function and suggests that th...
The Journal of Physiology, 2007
Poletto, Christopher J., Laura P. Verdun, Robert Strominger, and Christy L. Ludlow. Correspondenc... more Poletto, Christopher J., Laura P. Verdun, Robert Strominger, and Christy L. Ludlow. Correspondence between laryngeal vocal fold movement and muscle activity during speech and nonspeech gestures. To better understand the role of each of the laryngeal muscles in producing vocal fold movement, activation of these muscles was correlated with laryngeal movement during different tasks such as sniff, cough or throat clear, and speech syllable production. Four muscles [the posterior cricoarytenoid, lateral cricoarytenoid, cricothyroid (CT), and thyroarytenoid (TA)] were recorded with bipolar hooked wire electrodes placed bilaterally in four normal subjects. A nasoendoscope was used to record vocal fold movement while simultaneously recording muscle activity. Muscle activation level was correlated with ipsilateral vocal fold angle for vocal fold opening and closing. Pearson correlation coefficients and their statistical significance were computed for each trial. Significant effects of muscle (P Յ 0.0005) and task (P ϭ 0.034) were found on the r (transformed to Fisher's ZЈ) values. All of the posterior cricoarytenoid recordings related significantly with vocal opening, whereas CT activity was significantly correlated with opening only during sniff. The TA and lateral cricoarytenoid activities were significantly correlated with vocal fold closing during cough. During speech, the CT and TA activity correlated with both opening and closing. Laryngeal muscle patterning to produce vocal fold movement differed across tasks; reciprocal muscle activity only occurred on cough, whereas speech and sniff often involved simultaneous contraction of muscle antagonists. In conclusion, different combinations of muscle activation are used for biomechanical control of vocal fold opening and closing movements during respiratory, airway protection, and speech tasks.
Neuropsychologia, 1989
To determine if Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have increasing difficulty as speech tasks beco... more To determine if Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have increasing difficulty as speech tasks become longer or more complex, the timing and accuracy of isolated syllables and repeated sequences ofsyllables were studied. Acoustic measures of PD patients' syllables were similarly impaired relative to normal controls for both isolated and repeated syllable sequences. Listeners' identification scores were equally high for both types of productions.