Examining Speech Perception in Parkinson's Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing A Means of Examining and Diagnosing Deficits in Prosodic Perception in People With Parkinson’s Disease
IRAS ID
162954
Contact name
Alexander S Barbour
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Strathclyde
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 20 days
Research summary
Prosody is the modulation of the acoustic properties of speech, these properties include; fundamental frequency (F0); voice quality; loudness; speech rate; and rhythm. This modulation conveys much of the speaker’s intended meaning making it essential to the conveyance and interpretation of spoken communications. An inability to correctly perceive or convey prosody therefore significantly impedes an individual’s ability to communicate with those around them, significantly disrupting their quality of life.
People with Parkinson’s disease (PD) are often unable to perceive or produce appropriate prosody which can result in comorbidities or exacerbates existing ones. These symptoms do not respond well to traditional dopaminergic treatment and in spite of the difficulties they cause the patient, the mechanisms underlying them are not well understood and their prevalence not well documented.
The aim of this project is:
I) To record the EEG response of people with Parkinson’s disease to incongruent prosodic features in speech. This will help establish if dysprosody in Parkinson’s disease is a result of deficits in early and automatic processing or in later, cognitive processing.
II) To use any deviations in the participant’s EEG response to develop a model of a biomarker for dysprosody and develop an algorithm that can automatically pick out this biomarker in EEG data. This algorithm will be able to quickly indicate the absence or presence of dysprosody (or other pathologies) in EEG data.
III) Examine if deviations in EEG response are dependent on any additional factors. This will be assessed by carrying out four baseline tests. These tests will measure; the cognitive ability of the patient; the presence/absence of depression; their prosodic recognition; their speech intelligibility; and the severity and sidedness of their PD.REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
16/WS/0052
Date of REC Opinion
20 Apr 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion