EMA assessment of tongue-jaw co-ordination during speech in dysarthria following traumatic brain injury.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the spatio-timing aspects of tongue-jaw co-ordination during speech in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). It was hypothesized that both timing and spatial co-ordination would be affected by TBI.


METHODS
A group comparison design wherein Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to compare non-neurologically impaired individuals with individuals with TBI.


METHODS
Nine non-neurologically impaired adults and nine adults with TBI were involved in the study. Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) was used to track tongue and jaw movement during /t/ and /k/, embedded in sentence and syllable stimuli.


RESULTS
Analysis of group data did not reveal a significant difference in spatio-timing tongue-jaw co-ordination between the control group and TBI group. On an individual basis, a proportion of individuals with TBI differed from non-neurologically impaired participants with regard to articulatory order and percentage of jaw contribution to /t/.


CONCLUSIONS
EMA assessment results supported perceptual data; those adults who presented with severe articulatory disturbances exhibited the most deviant spatio-timing tongue-jaw co-ordination patterns. This finding could provide a new and specific direction for treatment, directed at combined movement patterns.
Bartle
Carly J
CJ
Motor Speech Research Unit, Division of Speech Pathology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. c.bartle@uq.edu.au
Goozée
Justine V
JV
Scott
Dion
D
Murdoch
Bruce E
BE
Kuruvilla
Mili
M
D000328:Adult; D001259:Ataxia / Q000175:diagnosis; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004401:Dysarthria / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007568:Jaw / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests / Q000379:methods; D014059:Tongue / Q000502:physiology*