Speech production relies on fine voluntary motor control of respiration, phonation, and articulation. The cortical initiation of complex sequences of coordinated movements is thought to result in parallel outputs, one directed toward motor neurons while the "efference copy" projects to auditory and somatosensory fields. It is proposed that the latter encodes the expected sensory consequences of...

This study investigates speech motor control in 4-year-old Canadian French children in comparison with adults. It focuses on measures of token-to-token variability in the production of isolated vowels and on anticipatory extrasyllabic coarticulation within V1-C-V2 sequences. Acoustic and ultrasound articulatory data were recorded. Acoustic data from 20 children and 10 adults have been analyzed....

BACKGROUND One contemporary view of stuttering posits that speech disfluencies arise from anomalous speech motor control. PURPOSE To verify the rest muscle tension and speech reaction time of fluent and stuttering adults. METHOD 22 adults, divided in two groups: G1--11 fluent individuals; G2--11 stutterers. Electromyography recordings (inferior orbicularis oris) were collected in two differ...

While the beneficial effect of levodopa on traditional motor control tasks have been well documented over the decades, its effect on speech motor control has rarely been objectively examined and the existing literature remains inconclusive. This paper aims to examine the effect of levodopa on speech in patients with Parkinson's disease. It was hypothesized that levodopa would improve preparator...

OBJECTIVE To assess speech abilities in adolescents born preterm and investigate whether there is an association between specific speech deficits and brain abnormalities. STUDY DESIGN Fifty adolescents born prematurely (<33 weeks' gestation) with a spectrum of brain injuries were recruited (mean age, 16 years). Speech examination included tests of speech-sound processing and production and sp...

It is an old-standing debate in the field of speech communication to determine whether speech perception involves auditory or multisensory representations and processing, independently on any procedural knowledge about the production of speech units or on the contrary if it is based on a recoding of the sensory input in terms of articulatory gestures, as posited in the Motor Theory of Speech Pe...

Research using clinical populations to explore the relationship between hemispheric speech lateralization and handedness has focused on individuals with speech and language disorders, such as dyslexia or specific language impairment (SLI). Such work reveals atypical patterns of cerebral lateralization and handedness in these groups compared to controls. There are few studies that examine this r...

The existence of feedback control mechanisms from motor to sensory systems is a central idea in speech production research. Consistent with the view that articulation modulates the activity of the auditory cortex, it has been shown that silent articulation improved identification of concordant speech sounds [1]. In the present study, we replicated and extended this finding by demonstrating that...

Signs of Parkinson's disease (PD) are augmented by speech and repetitive motor tasks. The neurophysiological basis for this phenomenon is unknown, but may involve augmentation of β (13-30 Hz) oscillations within the subthalamic nucleus (STN). We hypothesized that speech and motor tasks increase β power in STN and propose a mechanism for clinical observations of worsening motor state during such...

Purpose This preliminary study compared the speech motor control of the tongue and jaw between children with cerebral palsy (CP) and their typically developing (TD) peers. Method Tongue tip and jaw movements of 4 boys with spastic CP and 4 age- and sex-matched TD peers were recorded using an electromagnetic articulograph during 10 repetitions of "Dad told stories today." The duration, path di...