Speech characteristics

PURPOSE: Speech fluency has important diagnostic implications for individuals with poststroke aphasia (PSA) as well as primary progressive aphasia (PPA), and quantitative assessment of connected speech has emerged as a widely used approach across both etiologies. The purpose of this review was to provide a clearer picture on the range, nature, and utility of individual quantitative speech/language measures and methods used to assess connected speech fluency in PSA and PPA, and to compare approaches across etiologies...

PURPOSE: Military-affiliated individuals (MIs) are at a higher risk of developing hearing loss and tinnitus. While these disorders are well-studied in MIs, their impact relative to non-military-affiliated individuals (non-MIs) remains understudied. Our study compared hearing, speech-in-noise (SIN) perception, and tinnitus characteristics between MIs and non-MIs. METHOD: MIs ( n = 84) and non-MIs ( n = 193) underwent hearing threshold assessment and Quick Speech-in-Noise Test...

BACKGROUND: Hearing loss is a common sequala of Streptococcus suis ( S. suis ) meningitis, but few have addressed cochlear implantation (CI) candidates with S. suis meningitis. OBJECTIVES: To assess the clinical characteristics and CI postoperative outcomes in S. suis meningitis patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Eight S. suis meningitis patients underwent CI at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital between 2020 and 2023. Control groups included (1) non-Suis meningitis patients ( n  = 12) and (2) non-meningitis patients ( n  = 35)...


Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to reinstate lost communication faculties. Results from speech decoding studies indicate that a usable speech BCI based on activity in the sensorimotor cortex (SMC) can be achieved using subdurally implanted electrodes. However, the optimal characteristics for a successful speech implant are largely unknown. We address this topic in a high field blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, by assessing the decodability of spoken words as a function of hemisphere, gyrus, sulcal depth, and position along the ventral/dorsal-axis...

Communication is challenging for disabled individuals, but with advancement of brain-computer interface (BCI) systems, alternative communication systems can be developed. Current BCI spellers, such as P300, SSVEP, and MI, have drawbacks like reliance on external stimuli or conversation irrelevant mental tasks. In contrast to these systems, Imagined speech based BCI systems rely on directly decoding the vowels/words user is thinking, making them more intuitive, user friendly and highly popular among Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) researchers...

Extramedullary plasmacytoma (EMP) is an uncommon tumor marked by the monoclonal growth of plasma cells without the characteristics of multiple myeloma. EMP represents 3% of all plasma cell tumors. An 89-year-old male patient with hypertension was admitted to our tertiary care hospital with uncontrolled unilateral epistaxis. After a year and a half of recurring epistaxis, the patient's bleeding became more frequent and could no longer be controlled with nasal packing. Angiofibroma was suspected as the initial differential diagnosis, and angiofibroma embolization was performed...

OBJECTIVE: Early detection of cognitive impairment in the elderly is crucial for diagnosis and appropriate care. Brief, cost-effective cognitive screening instruments are needed to help identify individuals who require further evaluation. This study presents preliminary data on a new screening technology using automated voice recording analysis software in a Spanish population. METHOD: Data were collected from 174 Spanish-speaking individuals clinically diagnosed as cognitively normal (CN, n  = 87) or impaired (mild cognitive impairment [MCI], n  = 63; all-cause dementia, n  = 24)...

INTRODUCTION: Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) is a rare, treatable disease of the central nervous system (CNS) caused by an antibody-related immune response. This study is to investigate the correlation of clinical features, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) characteristics, and prognosis in patients with AE. METHODS: A total of 71 patients diagnosed with antibody-positive AE were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were divided into three groups: anti-NMDAR group, anti-LGI1 group, and other types...

This study aimed to document the prevalence, severity, and risk factors of velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) in craniofacial microsomia (CFM) and to analyse differences in VPD-related speech characteristics between CFM patients without cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P), CFM patients with CL/P, and CL/P patients without CFM (control). A total of 223 patients with CFM were included, of whom 59 had a CL/P. Thirty-four CFM patients had VPD, including 20 with a CL/P. VPD was significantly more prevalent in CFM with CL/P than in CFM without CL/P (odds ratio (OR) 4...

This is the case report of a woman who started to write and read from right to left after anterior cerebral artery stroke, affecting the left supplementary motor area. No cases were found in the literature with exactly the same characteristics. She has been able to read and write faster after rehabilitation approach at Sarah Network of Rehabilitation Hospitals, in the Belo Horizonte city unit, Brazil, despite the maintenance of the inversion. She returned to her previous activities in an adaptive way. It was discussed how the dysfunction in this cerebral area and its connections may disturb the reading strategy and direction...

BACKGROUND: The Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC:0-5TM ) is widely used in many Western countries. For Russian specialists, such classification represents a relatively new tool for the comprehensive diagnosis of mental disorders in children from birth to the five-year-old threshold. The purpose for presenting this case study report is to showcase the practical application of the DC:0-5TM . AIM: This study aims to illustrate the diagnostic process according to the DC:0-5TM criteria using the example of a specific clinical case report involving the collaborative efforts of two specialists: a child psychiatrist and a clinical child psychologist...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Occupational therapy (OT) consensus recommendations and articles outlining a sensory-based OT intervention for functional neurological disorder (FND) have been published. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the efficacy of OT interventions for FND. We performed a retrospective cohort study aimed at independently replicating preliminarily characterized sensory processing difficulties in patients with FND and reporting on clinical outcomes of a sensory-based OT treatment in this population...

UNLABELLED: Prior lesion, noninvasive-imaging, and intracranial-electroencephalography (iEEG) studies have documented hierarchical, parallel, and distributed characteristics of human speech processing. Yet, there have not been direct, intracranial observations of the latency with which regions outside the temporal lobe respond to speech, or how these responses are impacted by task demands. We leveraged human intracranial recordings via stereo-EEG to measure responses from diverse forebrain sites during (i) passive listening to /bi/ and /pi/ syllables, and (ii) active listening requiring /bi/-versus-/pi/ categorization...

OBJECTIVES: Postlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants (CIs) have difficulties with perceiving differences in speakers' voice characteristics and benefit little from voice differences for the perception of speech in competing speech. However, not much is known yet about the perception and use of voice characteristics in prelingually deaf implanted children with CIs. Unlike CI adults, most CI children became deaf during the acquisition of language. Extensive neuroplastic changes during childhood could make CI children better at using the available acoustic cues than CI adults, or the lack of exposure to a normal acoustic speech signal could make it more difficult for them to learn which acoustic cues they should attend to...

Impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease are relatively common drug-induced addictive behaviours that are usually triggered by the dopamine agonists pramipexole, ropinirole and rotigotine. This narrative review aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge of impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease. We summarised the prevalence, clinical features, risk factors and potential underlying mechanisms of impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease. Moreover, recent advances in behavioural and imaging characteristics and management strategies are discussed...

It has been shown that reading the vowel [i] and consonant [t] facilitates precision grip responses, while [ɑ] and [k] are associated with faster power grip responses. A similar effect has been observed when participants perform responses with small or large response keys. The present study investigated whether the vowels and consonants could produce different effects with the grip responses and keypresses when the speech units are read aloud (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiment 2). As a second objective, the study investigated whether the recently observed effect, in which the upper position of a visual stimulus is associated with faster vocalizations of the high vowel and the lower position is associated with the low vowel, can be observed in manual responses linking, for example, the [i] with responses of the upper key and [ɑ] with lower responses...

INTRODUCTION: There is a substantial discrepancy between international and local prevalence rates for speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) amongst children in New Zealand. Reports of communication impairment are likely to be underestimates. Prevalence data can describe population characteristics and inform the scope and nature of services to adequately meet demand. Parents and other caregivers are central to the early identification of children with communication needs but they may not recognise their child's needs or act on their concerns...

BACKGROUND: Delay time to hospital arrival may be influenced by lack of recognition of stroke signs and the necessity to seek emergency medical, which in turn is influenced by language barriers to, a modifiable risk factor, stroke awareness education. The objective was to determine the comprehension and satisfaction of a Spanish stroke awareness acronym, RÁPIDO, among community-living, Hispanic and Latino, Spanish-reading adults. METHODS: A 33-item survey was completed by 166 adults. Data on sociodemographics, language preferences, stroke education, and comprehension and satisfaction with RÁPIDO were collected...

AIM: We aim to describe the behavioral phenotype of children and adolescents with the good to intermediate attenuated form of non-ketotic hyperglycinemia (NKH) and to explore associations between the behavioral phenotype and age, sex, plasma glycine levels and drug treatment. METHOD: Parents of children with attenuated NKH completed questionnaires assessing maladaptive behavior, adaptive behavior, social communication, speech/language development and motor development in addition to demographic and medical questions...

BACKGROUND: Pathogenic variants of PCDH19, located on the X-chromosome (Xq22.1), cause a rare epileptic encephalopathy with speech and development delay, seizures, behavioral and psychiatric problems. The specific underlying pathogenic mechanism is known as "cellular interference" that results in affected heterozygous females, normal hemizygous males and affected mosaic males but its functioning is not yet clear. OBJECTIVES: Reporting new cases of affected males is considered useful to a deeper insight...