Background: Speaking louder/more intensely represents a longstanding technique employed to manage voice and intelligibility changes in people with Parkinson's. This technique has been formalized into a treatment approach and marketed as the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT®) programme. Evidence for its efficacy has been published. Studies…

Background: Mutations of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cause a broad spectrum of clinical phenotypes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that voice and swallow problems are a common feature of these diseases. Aims: To characterize accurately the prevalence and severity of voice and swallow problems in a large cohort of patients with mitochondrial disease.…

Background: The psychosocial impact of acquired dysarthria on the speaker is well recognized. To date, speech-and-language therapists have no instrument available to measure this construct. This has implications for outcome measurement and for planning intervention. This paper describes the Dysarthria Impact Profile (DIP), an instrument that has…

Background: Measures of articulatory diadochokinesis (DDK) are widely used in the assessment of motor speech disorders and they play a role in detecting abnormality, monitoring speech performance changes and classifying syndromes. Although in clinical practice DDK is generally measured perceptually, without support from instrumental methods that…

Background: Many factors influence listener perception of dysarthric speech. Final consensus on the role of gender and listener experience is still to be reached. The speaker's perception of his/her speech has largely been ignored. Aims: (1) To compare speaker and listener perception of the intelligibility of dysarthric speech; (2) to explore the…