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Evaluating the Performance of Diadochokinetic Tests in Characterizing Parkinson’s Disease Hypokinetic Dysarthria

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Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1710))

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Abstract

Hypokinetic Dysarthria (HD) is a hampering speech symptom appearing as a consequence of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). HD has been traditionally evaluated using diadochokinetic tests such as the fast repetition of monosyllables as [pa], [ta], and [ka] and multisyllable sequences [pataka] and [pakata] towards assessing speech performance. However, the practical validity of these tests in assessing the speech of a person with PD (PwP) to assess performance degradation and infer PD-related symptoms has not been thoroughly investigated. The aim of the present work is to explore the performance of tests consisting in a monosyllabic repetition [...tatata...] vs a multisyllable one [...pataka...]). The methodology proposed is based on estimating distributions of syllable and inter-syllable interval durations obtained from diadichokinetic tests using Kolmogorov-Smirnov Approximations (KSA), and comparing the resulting distributions by means of Jensen-Shannon Divergence (JSD) to assess the efficiency of both types of tests confronting utterances from Healthy Controls (HC) with the ones from PD participants. The results from the evaluation of 30 gender-balanced participants, 18 PwP and 12 HC, show that the monosyllable test does not appear to differentiate well between the two cohorts, whereas the multisyllable test shows better performance. Although the relatively small sample size suggests findings should be cautiously interpreted, they tentatively underline the need to use the most adequate tests to assess HD diadochokinetic performance.

This research received funding from grants TEC2016-77791-C4-4-R (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness of Spain), and Teca-Park-MonParLoc FGCSIC-CENIE 0348-CIE-6-E (InterReg Programme). The authors want to thank the Parkinson’s Disease association APARKAM and the voluntary participants contributing to this initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NeuSpeLab, CTB, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28220, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain

    Pedro Gómez-Vilda

  2. Usher Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Andrés Gómez-Rodellar & Athanasios Tsanas

  3. E.T.S. de Ingeniería Informática - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Campus de Móstoles, Tulipán, s/n, 28933, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

    Daniel Palacios-Alonso

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  1. Pedro Gómez-Vilda
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  2. Andrés Gómez-Rodellar
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  3. Daniel Palacios-Alonso
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  4. Athanasios Tsanas
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Correspondence to Pedro Gómez-Vilda .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. INSA-Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Claudine Gehin

  2. FEMTO-ST, Besancon, France

    Bruno Wacogne

  3. Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Alexandre Douplik

  4. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Ronny Lorenz

  5. Charles River Analytics, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA

    Bethany Bracken

  6. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Cátia Pesquita

  7. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Aveiro, Portugal

    Ana Fred

  8. Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Caparica, Portugal

    Hugo Gamboa

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Gómez-Vilda, P., Gómez-Rodellar, A., Palacios-Alonso, D., Tsanas, A. (2022). Evaluating the Performance of Diadochokinetic Tests in Characterizing Parkinson’s Disease Hypokinetic Dysarthria. In: Gehin, C., et al. Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies. BIOSTEC 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1710. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20664-1_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20664-1_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20664-1

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