The Effect of Tongue-Jaw Coupling on Phonetic Distinctiveness of Vowels in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

Conclusions Different from healthy controls who established optimal functional coupling between the tongue and the jaw during vowel productions, individuals at the early-to-middle stages of bulbar ALS showed various adaptive changes in tongue-jaw coupling in response to the disease-related biomechanical and muscular changes in the articulators (particularly in the tongue). These adaptive changes in tongue-jaw coupling were found to be partially effective in mitigating the negative effect of articulatory involvement on phonetic distinctiveness of vowels. As the disease progressed to the late stage, such adaptations appeared to be no longer evident, resulting in a substantial overall reduction of vowel contrasts. PMID: 31433712 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: J Speech Lang Hear Res Source Type: research