ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH PROSODY IN HUNTINGTONS AND PARKINSONS-DISEASE - A PRELIMINARY-REPORT

Perceptual studies have indicated that basal ganglia dysfunctions such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD) may give ri se to impaired prosodic speech modulation (dysprosodia, aprosodia). Th e available parametric data, however, are sparse. In the present study declarative, affectively neutral test sentences were used to investig ate the production of sentence accent in PD and HD subjects. Reduced d urational, pitch and loudness changes concomitant with accent realizat ion could be disclosed in HD, whereas the PD group presented with slig htly decreased durational stress contrast only. Both patient groups sh owed preserved categorical aspects of pitch accent signalling. Most pr esumably, speech motor deficits rather than disturbances of supramodal processing of prosody are responsible for the observed deviations of sentence accent production.