Patterns of variability in voice onset time: a developmental study of motor speech skills in humans

This study investigated the developmental patterns of variability in the speech parameter voice onset time (VOT) in forty six children. Five groups of children participated in the study as follows: i) Group 1 - aged 5 years 8 months (n=6); ii) Group 2 - 7 years 10 months (n=10); iii) Group 3 - 9 years 10 months (n=10); iv) Group 4 - 11 years 10 months (n=10), and v) Group 5 - 13 years 2 months (n=10). Coefficient of variation (COV) values were examined for the VOT values of both "voiceless" (/p t k/) and "voiced" (/b d g/) plosives to determine patterns of variability. Significant effects of age were revealed for both the voiceless and voiced plosives, and levels of variability leveled off for Group 4. The data suggest that although variability in VOT decreases with age, the presence of residual variability may be a prerequisite for the further refinement of motor speech skills

Effects of oral and oropharyngeal cancer on speech intelligibility using acoustic analysis: Systematic review

Background: The development of automatic tools based on acoustic analysis allows to overcome the limitations of perceptual assessment for patients with head and neck cancer. The aim of this study is to provide a systematic review of literature describing the effects of oral and oropharyngeal cancer on speech intelligibility using acoustic analysis. Methods: Two databases (PubMed and Embase) were surveyed. The selection process, according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement, led to a final set of 22 articles. Results: Nasalance is studied mainly in oropharyngeal patients. The vowels are mostly studied using formant analysis and vowel space area, the consonants by means of spectral moments with specific parameters according to their phonetic characteristic. Machine learning methods allow classifying “intelligible” or “unintelligible” speech for T3 or T4 tumors. Conclusions: The development of comprehensive models combining different acoustic measures would allow a better consideration of the functional impact of the speech disorder

Assessment of adult speech disorders: current situation and needs in French-speaking clinical practice

International audienceIntroduction: Speech assessment methods used in clinical practice are varied and mainly perceptual and motor. Reliable assessment of speech disorders is essential for the tailoring of the patient's treatment plan. Objective: To describe current clinical practices and identify the shortcomings and needs reported by French-speaking clinicians regarding the assessment of speech disorders in adult patients. Methods: Data were collected using an online questionnaire for French-speaking speech and language pathologists (SLPs) in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Maghreb. Forty-nine questions were grouped into six domains: participant data, educational and occupational background, experience with speech disorders, patient population, tools and tasks for speech assessment, and possible lacks regarding the current assessment of speech disorders. Results: Responses from 119 clinicians were included in the analyses. SLPs generally use " a la carte" assessment with a large variety of tasks and speech samples. About one quarter of them do not use existing assessment batteries. Those who do mostly use them partially. Pseudo-words are rarely used and are absent from standardized batteries, in contrast to the major use of words and sentences. Perceptual evaluation largely prevails (mainly overall ratings of speech "intelligibility", "severity," and "comprehensibility" and percent-correct phonemes), whereas the recording equipment for acoustic measures is not standardized and only scarcely described by the SLPs. The most commonly used questionnaire to assess the functional impact of the speech disorder is the Voice Handicap Index; one quarter of the SLPs does not use any questionnaire. Overall, the available tools are considered only moderately satisfactory. The main reported shortcomings are a lack of objectivity and reproducibility of speech measures; exhaustiveness and consideration of specific speech parameters (prosody, speech rate, and nasality); practicality of the assessment tools. Conclusion: This study highlights a lack of standardization of the speech assessment in French-speaking adults and the need to offer new reliable tools for an optimized, accurate speech assessment. The automation of these tools would allow for rapid, reproducible, and accurate measures

Etude de l’expression génique dans la maladie de Parkinson

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Unexpected cell wall alteration-mediated bactericidal activity of the antifungal caspofungin against vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium

International audience<i>Enterococcus faecium</i> has become a major opportunistic pathogen with the emergence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). As part of the gut microbiota, they have to cope with numerous stresses including effects of antibiotics and other xenobiotics, especially in patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICUs) who receive many medications. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of the most prescribed xenobiotics for ICU patients on fitness, pathogenicity and antimicrobial resistance of the <i>vanB</i>-positive <i>E. faecium</i> Aus0004 reference strain. Several phenotypic analyses were carried out and we observed that caspofungin, an antifungal agent belonging to the echinocandins family, had an important effect on <i>E. faecium</i> growth in vitro. We confirmed this effect by electron microscopy and peptidoglycan analysis and showed that, even at a subinhibitory concentration (¼ × MIC, 8 mg/L), caspofungin had an impact on cell wall organization especially in abundance of some muropeptide precursors. By RNA-seq, it was also shown that around 20% of the transcriptome were altered in the presence of caspofungin with 321 and 259 significantly upregulated and downregulated genes, respectively. Since the fungal target of caspofungin (i.e., beta-(1,3)-glucan synthase) was absent in bacteria, the mechanistic pathway of caspofungin activity was investigated. The repression of genes involved in the pyruvate metabolism seemed to have a drastic impact on bacterial cell viability while decrease of glycerol metabolism could explain the conformational modifications of peptidoglycan. This is the first report of caspofungin antibacterial activity against <i>E. faecium</i>, highlighting the potential impact of non-antibiotic xenobiotics against bacterial pathogens