Acoustic analysis of voice and speech in parkinson's disease

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the vowel articulation, speech rate and voice parameters of individuals with early and late phase Parkinson's disease by using acoustic analysis methods in comparison with healthy group, and determine the relationship between these speech parameters. Therefore, the data were obtained from 15 individuals with early phase Parkinson's disease and 15 individuals with late phase Parkinson's disease, besides 30 age and gender-matched healthy individuals. Triangular Vowel Area, Quadrilateral Vowel Area and F2i/F2u ratio are used in the analysis of vowel articulation; Speech Rate and Articulation Rate were used for speech rate analysis; F0, Jitter, Shimmer and Noise-to- harmonics ratio were the parameters for voice analysis. The results showed the significant decrease in the Triangular Vowel Area, Quadrilateral Vowel Area, F2i/F2u ratio in Parkinson's disease, however no significant difference was found between individuals with Parkinson's disease and healthy individuals in terms of speech rate and voice parameters. No significant difference was observed between individuals with early and late phase Parkinson's disease in any dependent variables. In the patient group, correlations between all three vowel articulation parameters and speech rate parameters were significant. In both healthy and patient groups, Triangular and Quadrilateral Vowel Areas of females were larger than males and F2i/F2u ratios were higher.