Therapeutic effects of intensive voice treatment (LSVT LOUD^®) for children with spastic cerebral palsy and dysarthria: A phase I treatment validation study

<p><i>Purpose</i>: The aim of the present study was to validate and extend the evaluation of treatment outcomes following LSVT LOUD® in children with dysarthria secondary to cerebral palsy (CP).</p> <p><i>Method</i>: Seven children (5 females, 6–10 years) with spastic quadriplegia and dysarthria received LSVT LOUD. Outcomes included: (<i>a</i>) quantitative and qualitative indices of communication and social functioning representing therapeutic effects and (<i>b</i>) features of the acoustic signal representing physiological effects on the speech mechanism. A matched group of typically developing children served as controls. Testing occurred just prior to (<i>PRE</i>), immediately following (<i>POST</i>), and at 12 weeks post-treatment (<i>FUP</i>).</p> <p><i>Result</i>: Expert listeners preferred voice quality and articulatory precision of children with CP at <i>FUP</i> as compared to <i>PRE</i>. Acoustic data indicated improvements on select measures of vocal functioning at <i>POST</i> with some maintenance at <i>FUP</i>. Single word intelligibility improved immediately <i>POST</i>, but was not maintained at <i>FUP</i>. Parents rated positive changes in characteristics of voice and speech and qualitative changes in communication at both <i>POST</i> and <i>FUP</i>.</p> <p><i>Conclusion</i>: The present study validated some of the previous LSVT LOUD outcomes in children with dysarthria and CP and extended our understanding of therapeutic effects through qualitative data obtained from extensive parent interviews.</p

Syllable-related breathing in infants in the second year of life

Purpose: This study explored whether breathing behaviors of infants within the 2nd year of life differ between tidal breathing and breathing supporting single unarticulated syllables and canonical/articulated syllables. Method: Vocalizations and breathing kinematics of 9 infants between 53 and 90 weeks of age were recorded. A strict selection protocol was used to identify analyzable breath cycles. Syllables were categorized on the basis of consensus coding. Inspiratory and expiratory durations, excursions, and slopes were calculated for the 3 breath cycle types and were normalized using mean tidal breath measures. Results: Tidal breathing cycles were significantly different from syllable-related cycles on all breathing measures. There were no significant differences between unarticulated syllable cycles and canonical syllable cycles, even after controlling for utterance duration and sound pressure level. Conclusions: Infants in the 2nd year of life exhibit clear differences between tidal breathing and speech-related breathing, but categorically distinct breath support for syllable types with varying articulatory demands was not evident in the present findings. Speech development introduces increasingly complex utterances, so older infants may produce detectable articulation-related adaptations of breathing kinematics. For younger infants, breath support may vary systematically among utterance types, due more to phonatory variations than to articulatory demands. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) selectively modulates semantic information during reading

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. The left angular gyrus has long been implicated in semantic processing. Here we tested whether or not transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left angular gyrus modulated reading performance. Adult readers (N = 77) (1) read aloud words that varied in degree of imageability, a semantic word property known to activate the angular gyrus, and (2) completed an N-back task (control task). Individuals were randomly assigned to either the anodal, cathodal or sham stimulation conditions. We found that anodal (p = 0.001) and cathodal (p \u3c 0.001) stimulation impacted how imageability facilitates reading times such that readers who showed the largest imageability effects pre-stimulation showed the greatest reduction in these effects post-stimulation. No effects of stimulation were found in the sham group (p \u3e 0.05) or for the control task (i.e., N-back; p \u3e 0.05). These findings indicate that reading pathways can be modulated via brain stimulation (tDCS) to shift individuals’ sensitivity to word-level characteristics, namely imageability