Aerodynamic control in apraxia at three intraoral pressure levels

Five neurologically normal and five apractic subjects were required to develop and maintain target intraoral pressure levels during 5-sec. trials. The apractic subjects showed increased latencies in gaining the target and reduced maintenance time and increased variability in attempts to stay at target. Results suggest that physiologically based assessment tasks provide sensitive indices of the degree of oral apraxia in patients with left-hemisphere brain damage.