The Effects of a Choral Singing Intervention on Speech Characteristics in Individuals With Parkinson’s Disease: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine speech characteristics in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) before and after participation in an 11-week choral singing intervention. Speech characteristics were analyzed using an acoustic measure of vowel space area (VSA) and a standardized speech intelligibility metric. Participants included five males and five females with PD. VSA was derived for the corner vowels (/i/, /u/, /æ/ /α/) produced during a sentence-level task. VSA was expressed as an irregular quadrilateral formed by the first and second formants of these corner vowels. A validated speech intelligibility instrument was administered pre- and posttreatment. VSA significantly increased posttreatment, which suggests greater tongue excursion during vowel articulation. Speech intelligibility scores significantly increased posttreatment, thus reflecting improved speech communication. Results suggest that choral singing may be a viable speech treatment for some individuals with PD. A large-scale randomized controlled trial is warranted.

The effects of choral singing on communication impairments in acquired brain injury: A systematic review

“…Sample sizes ranged from 10 (Yinger and Lapointe 2012, Higgins et al . 2018, Elefant et al . 2012) to 75 (Tamplin et al .…”

“…2016), two used a trained vocal performer/singing teacher (Higgins et al . 2018, Evans et al . 2012), two employed professional choir directors (i.e., Zumbansen et al .…”

“…A further four included homework as part of their protocol (i.e., Higgins et al . 2018, Shih et al . 2012, Tamplin et al .…”

Feasibility of Speech Telerehabilitation for a Patient with Parkinson's Disease in a Low-Resource Country during the Pandemic: A Case Report

“…Meanwhile, choral singing therapy is based on the principle of overlapping areas of bi-hemispheric cortical activation to treat motor speech abnormalities associated with neurological disorders like PD. 33 The patient's cognitive and functional skills, awareness of her voice quality, compliance with medical advice, and family support may be considered positive prognosticating factors for the success of the telerehabilitation program. There was no report of problems with the internet and audiovisual clarity in this case, given the usual bandwidth commonly available from home wi-fi, which usually averages 18.6 megabits per second (Mbps) in the Philippines.…”

ClearSpeechTogether: a rater blinded, single, controlled feasibility study of speech intervention for people with progressive ataxia

“…The authors also highlight the increased opportunities for socialization, support, and integration of more client-driven goals into the activities, and how the practice in more naturalistic contexts as well as the social aspects of group intervention can facilitate better generalization of treatment targets and potentially also motor learning. More specifically, researchers have found that well-structured group therapy can provide similar quantitative benefits to individual therapy in primary intervention for speech deficits, as reflected by significant improvements in measures such as vocal intensity [31][32][33][34][35], maximum phonation time (MPT) [32,33,35,36] and intelligibility [37,38]. In addition, studies have demonstrated that group therapy can be effective in maintaining the gains resulting from intensive individual therapy [33,39].…”