Investigation acoustic intelligibility of high and low vowels in healthy adults and those with Parkinson's disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder resulting from significant decrease of dopamine in the brain. The main and most common symptom of speech disorder associated with Parkinson’s disease, which is kind of dysarthria, is reduction in speech intelligibility. Since this disorder represents damages to acoustic aspects, researchers are attracted to study the relationship between these two disorders. In this study, we assessed the comparison of speech vowels between normal people and patients with Parkinson’s disease. In this cross-sectional study, 18 voice samples of patients with Parkinson’s disease and the same number of samples from normal people in a voiceless environment were recorded and analyzed by Praat software. Data analysis was performed by independent samples and Mann-Whitney tests. All variables investigated in two groups showed significant differences. In adults with Parkinson’s disease, F1-F0 in low vowels showed a considerable reduction in respect to normal people (p<0.001). In addition, F2-F1 in high vowels represented a significant decrease in these patients (p<0.05). The results indicate that Parkinson’s disease affects formant frequency in patients compared with normal people. Reduction in speech intelligibility can be accurately measured using acoustic procedure.