Grants fund tests of portable devices in Parkinson’s speech therapy
MSU says devices may boost voice volume, clarity for patients with issues
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Grants fund research on portable devices for Parkinson's speech issues.
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Patients often experience communication difficulties.
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The devices aim to boost voice volume and clarity.
A team at Michigan State University (MSU) won two grants to support research into portable devices designed to improve communication for people with Parkinson’s disease and atypical parkinsonism.
Thea Knowles, PhD, assistant professor in MSU’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, is leading a team investigating the devices’ effectiveness at boosting speech volume and clarity. The National Institutes of Health National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and CurePSP will fund the study.
“For individuals with Parkinson’s disease or atypical parkinsonism, speech symptom management is not a one-size-fits-all approach,” Knowles said in a university news story. “Our current research aims to advance patient-centered augmentative speech treatment technology and clinical guidance for neurodegenerative speech and voice disorders.”
The MSU researchers will collaborate with colleagues in the university’s neurology and computer science departments, as well as with clinical researchers at the University of Michigan and Henry Ford Health, to expand treatment options that can improve patients’ communication, independence, and quality of life.
Targeting speech intelligibility
Parkinson’s disease is characterized by motor symptoms such as slowed movement, tremor, rigidity, and gait and balance problems. Atypical parkinsonism describes a group of neurological disorders that produce Parkinson’s-like motor symptoms, such as progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), and multiple system atrophy (MSA).
According to MSU, more than half of people with Parkinson’s and related conditions have hypophonia, a soft, breathy, or hoarse voice that makes it hard for them to communicate. Current treatments focus on behavioral strategies to teach patients to speak louder and more intentionally.
The team is investigating how portable devices, used alone or in combination with behavioral therapy, can improve the intelligibility and quality of conversational speech. The researchers will also work to identify acoustic features, or measurable characteristics extracted from sound, and device improvements that could lead to more personalized options.
The grants will allow the researchers to expand their study to include people with PSP, MSA, and CBD, who may have speech issues such as difficulty finding words, controlling speech rate, and slurred speech. Traditional speech and voice therapies are often not appropriate for patients with these conditions, and they are “underrepresented in communication research,” MSU said.
CurePSP is funding the study through its Collaborative Approaches to Resources, Education and Support (CARES) grant program. These grants promote multi-center research within the CurePSP Centers of Care, a network of medical institutions that aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of PSP, CBD, and MSA.
