Temporal variables in parkinsonian speech

Temporal variables were detailed and compared in a text read by ten French subjects with mild to moderate Parkinson disease (PDS’s) and ten French healthy control subjects (CS’s). Longer total pause times were found for PDS’s, correlated to higher numbers of pauses and longer mean pause duration. The typical relationship observed between the distributional scheme of pauses and syntactic structure of the text remained largely intact for PDS’s. However, PDS’s also made strikingly long and unexpected within-phrase and within-word pauses, most often associated with a dysfluency. Pause time and pattern were found to be highly variable across PDS’s, some of whom had a fast speech rate, others a slow one. The results can be viewed as manifestations of deficient timing of motor events which appears to be a strong pathomechanism in Parkinson disease.