V. Fraile et al., PROSODY DEFICITS IN BASAL GANGLIA DISORDERS - AN ACOUSTICAL ANALYSIS OF LINGUISTIC INTONATION, Brain and cognition, 32(2), 1996, pp. 215-219
Studies conducted with Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have shown th
at this basal ganglia pathology is often associated with speech motor
control deficits, including prosody impairment. In this study, the rol
e of basal ganglia in the production of linguistic intonation was inve
stigated by comparing subjects presenting three motor syndromes PD, ta
rdive dyskinesia (TD), and Huntington's disease (HD) to a group of con
trol subjects. Measures of prosodic modulation were Delta F-0 values e
xtracted from digitized intonative sentences produced under imitation
and free production conditions (Auditory/Visual). Analyses revealed th
at clinical subjects exhibit similar profiles of prosodic deficits in
the Visual condition only. These results suggest that basal ganglia pl
ay an important role in the spontaneous generation of internal models
or strategies guiding movement sequences. Furthermore, it appears that
some motor control impairment observed after BG dysfunction may refle
ct critical and generalized deficits that may also affect cognitive fu
nctions.