Performance of monosyllabic vs multisyllabic diadochokinetic exercises in evaluating Parkinson’s disease hypokinetic dysarthria from fluency distributions

Pedro Gómez-Vilda, Andrés Gómez-Rodellar, Daniel Palacios-Alonso, Athanasios Tsanas

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Hypokinetic Dysarthria (HD) is a major debilitating symptom in the vast majority of people diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (PD). It has been traditionally evaluated using diadochokinetic exercises to estimate its degree of severity, among them, the fast repetition of monosyllables as [pa], [ta], and [ka] and multisyllable sequences as [pataka], [pakata], [badaga] and others alike. However, the real efficiency of these exercises in differentiating the participant behaviour as pathological or normative has not been investigated in depth. The aim of the present work is to explore the timely responsive performance of two of these exercises (a monosyllabic [ta] vs a multisyllabic [pataka]). A method to characterize statistically syllabic and inter-syllabic interval durations in the execution of these diadochokinetic exercises, based on Kolmogorov-Smirnov approximations and Jensen-Shannon Divergence has been used to assess the efficiency of both types of exercises. The results from the evaluation of 24 gender-balanced participants (12 PD and 12 controls) show that the monosyllabic exercise does not seem to differentiate well, whereas the multisyllabic exercise has a better differentiation performance. These findings, although relatively preliminary due to the limited sample size, underline the need to carefully consider the battery of tests towards assessing HD.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationBIOSIGNALS 2021 - 14th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing; Part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2021
EditorsBethany Bracken, Ana Fred, Hugo Gamboa
PublisherSCITEPRESS
Pages114-123
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9789897584909
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13 Feb 2021
Event14th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing, BIOSIGNALS 2021 - Part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: 11 Feb 202113 Feb 2021

Publication series

NameBIOSIGNALS 2021 - 14th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing; Part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2021

Conference

Conference14th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing, BIOSIGNALS 2021 - Part of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period11/02/2113/02/21

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Hypokinetic Dysarthria
  • Parkinson’s Disease
  • Speech Diadochokinetics

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