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ERIC Number: EJ1242268
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Jan
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
Automated Acoustic Analysis of Oral Diadochokinesis to Assess Bulbar Motor Involvement in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Rong, Panying
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v63 n1 p59-73 Jan 2020
Purpose: The purpose of this article was to validate a novel acoustic analysis of oral diadochokinesis (DDK) in assessing bulbar motor involvement in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method: An automated acoustic DDK analysis was developed, which filtered out the voice features and extracted the envelope of the acoustic waveform reflecting the temporal pattern of syllable repetitions during an oral DDK task (i.e., repetitions of /ta/ at the maximum rate on 1 breath). Cycle-to-cycle temporal variability (cTV) of envelope fluctuations and syllable repetition rate (sylRate) were derived from the envelope and validated against 2 kinematic measures, which are tongue movement jitter (movJitter) and alternating tongue movement rate (AMR) during the DDK task, in 16 individuals with bulbar ALS and 18 healthy controls. After the validation, cTV, sylRate, movJitter, and AMR, along with an established clinical speech measure, that is, speaking rate (SR), were compared in their ability to (a) differentiate individuals with ALS from healthy controls and (b) detect early-stage bulbar declines in ALS. Results: cTV and sylRate were significantly correlated with movJitter and AMR, respectively, across individuals with ALS and healthy controls, confirming the validity of the acoustic DDK analysis in extracting the temporal DDK pattern. Among all the acoustic and kinematic DDK measures, cTV showed the highest diagnostic accuracy (i.e., 0.87) with 80% sensitivity and 94% specificity in differentiating individuals with ALS from healthy controls, which outperformed the SR measure. Moreover, cTV showed a large increase during the early disease stage, which preceded the decline of SR. Conclusions: This study provided preliminary validation of a novel automated acoustic DDK analysis in extracting a useful measure, namely, cTV, for early detection of bulbar ALS. This analysis overcame a major barrier in the existing acoustic DDK analysis, which is continuous voicing between syllables that interferes with syllable structures. This approach has potential clinical applications as a novel bulbar assessment.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: slhr@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A