When the word doesn't come out: A synthetic overview of dysarthria

Motor speech disorders are common in a number of neurological conditions including diseases involving impairment of the pyramidal, extrapyramidal, and cerebellar pathways, cranial nerves, muscular apparatus, neuromuscular plaque, and of cognitive, symbolic and mnestic activities. The diagnosis of speech disorders, namely the dysarthrias, involves the assessment of characteristic structural cerebral, prosodic, phonetic and phonemic changes, often flanked by concomitant functional, clinical, neuroradiological, neurophysiological and behavioral impairment. This paper presents a brief outline of the most significant associations to facilitate prompt differential diagnosis and thereby reduce the number of instrumental examinations required for diagnostic testing.