Synchronous analysis of abnormal acoustic and linguistic production in Parkinson's speech

Abstract

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder involving speech and language deficits. Often, these are separately studied as proxies of motor and non-motor (e.g., cognitive) symptoms, respectively. Conversely, links between both dimensions remain virtually uncharted. This paper introduces a methodology that enables the synchronous study of acoustic and linguistic patterns in Parkinson's speech. Our findings show that verbs and nouns provided relevant acoustic and linguistic information not only to model motor impairments but also to understand non-motor symptoms like those that appear when Parkinson's disease patients develop mild cognitive impairment.