Brain Disorders & Therapy

Abstract

Dysarthrophonia in Association with Voice Analysis: A Case Report

Govathi Nikhila K

Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide and the brain damage caused by it can affect communication in several aspects. Voice analysis in dysarthria is challenging because of the complexity of the disorder and its effects on the speech production system. In this study we are presenting a 56-years-old male who was visited to Medanta Hospital with history of hypertension and chief complaint of Right upper limb weakness and slurred speech to the Emergency and later Clinically and Radio logically Diagnosed as LT MCA Infarct. Later, on the day 3 the patient has undergone Speech and Language Evaluation and Diagnosed with Spastic Dysarthria based on Frenched Dysarthria Assessment scale and later a detail Voice Analysis was done with using PRAAT software and analysed voice features. Voice analysis basically deals with decomposition of voice signal into voice parameters for processing the resulted features in desirable application. The features that are extracted in this paper are: frequency, pitch, voice intensity, formant, speech rate and pulse functions like Jitter (local), Jitter (local, absolute), Jitter (rap), Jitter (ppq5), Jitter (ddp), Shimmer (local), Shimmer (local, dB), Shimmer (apq3), Shimmer (apq5), Shimmer (apq11), Shimmer (dda) and Harmonic coefficients. Over all, we conclude with the voice parameters in spastic dysarthria which reveals interesting data on the voice quality with features which helps the clinician for better management. However, large sample study is required.