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Objective acoustic quantification of phonatory dysfunction in Huntington's disease
Jan Rusz1, Jiří Klempíř, Eva Baborová
1Department of Circuit Theory, Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Prague, Czech Republic. ruszjan@fel.cvut.cz
Plos One
|June 14, 2013
Summary
Huntington's disease (HD) significantly impairs voice production, with irregular pitch, sudden interruptions, increased noise, and articulation issues being key indicators. These voice changes correlate with disease severity, offering insights into vocal mechanism pathophysiology.
Area of Science:
- Neurology
- Speech-Language Pathology
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder known to affect motor function, including speech.
- While speech motor changes are recognized, the specific and most prominent voice dysfunctions in HD remain underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and characterize specific changes in phonatory function in individuals with Huntington's disease.
- To determine the most significant patterns of voice dysfunction associated with HD.
Main Methods:
- Examined 34 HD subjects and 34 healthy controls, analyzing sustained vowel phonations.
- Assessed parameters including airflow insufficiency, vocal fold vibration, signal perturbations, noise, and articulation.
- Utilized a predictive model to identify salient voice disorder patterns and correlated findings with the Unified HD Rating Scale (UHDRS) motor score.
Main Results:
- HD subjects exhibited deterioration across all investigated phonatory functions.
- Most significant patterns included irregular pitch fluctuations, sudden phonation interruption, increased noise, and misplacement of articulators (p<0.001).
- A combination of these four features achieved 94.1% accuracy in distinguishing HD patients from controls, with strong correlations between specific voice features and UHDRS motor components.
Conclusions:
- Specific phonatory features effectively detect subtle voice abnormalities in HD.
- The observed parallel between phonatory impairment and motor involvement in HD provides valuable insights into the vocal mechanism's pathophysiology.
