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Longitudinal objective assessment of speech in Multiple Sclerosis
Gustavo Noffs1, Thushara Perera2, Helmut Butzkueven3
1Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Melbourne, Australia; Department of Neuroscience, School of Translational Medicine, Monash University, Australia.
Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders
|October 9, 2024
Summary
Objective speech metrics showed minimal change over time in people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), suggesting familiarity and practice effects may obscure disease progression markers.
Area of Science:
- Neurology
- Speech Science
Background:
- Objective speech metrics show promise for monitoring Multiple Sclerosis (MS) progression.
- Remote testing can supplement clinical evaluations for MS management.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the short-term stability of speech metrics.
- To evaluate the long-term sensitivity of speech metrics to MS progression.
Main Methods:
- Prospective study recording speech from 69 MS patients over 1 year.
- Utilized sustained vowels, diadochokinetic tasks, reading passages, and personal stories.
- Selected 26 speech metrics based on MS association, disability correlation, and short-term stability.
Main Results:
- Reading rate showed slight improvement, potentially due to practice effects, not disease progression.
- Long-term vocalization time reduction in reading tasks was similar in progression and non-progression groups.
- Most speech metrics exhibited small changes within short-term variability, irrespective of disease progression.
Conclusions:
- Individual long-term speech metric changes in MS are often small and within short-term variability.
- Familiarity and practice effects may limit the ability to detect disease-related changes in speech.
- Further research is needed to reconcile these longitudinal findings with previous cross-sectional observations.
