Assessing Parkinson’s disease using prosodic analysis of neutral, stress-modified and rhymed speech

Abstract

Up to 90% of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suffer from hypokinetic dysarthria (HD). One of the most frequent manifestations of HD is dysprosody. Some hidden relations between clinical signs of HD and other motor and non-motor features of PD probably exist. To investigate, whether acoustic analysis of dysarthric speech can provide neurologists and clinical psychologists objective, para-clinical insight into motor and non-motor features of the examined PD patient, 72 PD patients were assessed by 8 clinical rating scales. Prosodic analysis of emotionally-neutral reading, stress-modified reading and poem recitation is performed. Correlation and regression analysis is employed to determine possible relationship between HD and progress of PD. Close relation of monopitch and monoloudness to motor aspects of PD was found. Freezing of gait showed strong connection with speech rate disturbances. Non-motor aspects were found independent of stress and rhythm in speech and strongly associated with speech rate and pausing abnormalities.