ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH PROSODY IN HUNTINGTONS AND PARKINSONS-DISEASE - A PRELIMINARY-REPORT

Perceptual studies have indicated that basal ganglia dysfunctions such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD) may give rise to impaired prosodic speech modulation (dysprosodia, aprosodia). The available parametric data, however, are sparse. In the present study declarative, affectively neutral test sentences were used to investigate the production of sentence accent in PD and HD subjects. Reduced durational, pitch and loudness changes concomitant with accent realization could be disclosed in HD, whereas the PD group presented with slightly decreased durational stress contrast only. Both patient groups showed preserved categorical aspects of pitch accent signalling. Most presumably, speech motor deficits rather than disturbances of supramodal processing of prosody are responsible for the observed deviations of sentence accent production.