| 11. |
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| 12. |
- Karlsson, Fredrik, Docent, 1975-
(author)
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Vocal activity detection and speaker diarization in speech databases : a feasibility study
- 2022
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The task of creating speech corpora for phonetic research is time-consuming and could be alleviated by automatic algorithms to provide draft indexing of speech acts. The present investigation assessed the feasibility of applying speech segmentation and speaker diarization models across a collection of recordings to produce a draft indexing that could be utilised by speech management systems to help the researcher to navigate a corpus. The results show that a readily available model for speech segmentation is very likely to contribute to the effectiveness of speech annotation workflows in phonetic research. Speaker diarization models may require specific training to manage consistent speaker separation across a speech corpus, and the evaluated model currently offers no clear advantage to the effectiveness of a speech corpus creation process.
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| 13. |
- Persson, Klara Josefina, et al.
(author)
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Do best practice recommendations align with current aphasia practices in the Swedish care context : a national survey
- 2022
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In: Aphasiology. - : Routledge. - 0268-7038 .- 1464-5041. ; 36:8, s. 903-920
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: For healthcare professionals, decision-makers and taxpayers, clinical guidelines and recommendations are tools for implementing interventions supported by research evidence. To ensure efficient, safe, and equal care for people with aphasia (PWA) in Sweden, it is vital that speech and language pathologists (SLPs) can work in accordance with evidence-based practice.Aim: To investigate to which degree the Best practice recommendations for aphasia (BPRA) are already well aligned with current practice in the management of aphasia and to what extent they would require adjustment to fit the Swedish care contexts.Methods and procedures: The BPRA were translated from English to Swedish according to steps 1 and 2 in the translation method recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). A web-based questionnaire was used for data collection. All healthcare regions in Sweden were represented, and the study included a total of 109 SLPs. The participants' perceived knowledge and application of the recommendations and whether the recommendations can serve as a basis for national clinical guidelines were summarized quantitatively. The participants' comments on the applicability of the BPRA were analyzed with qualitative content analysis according to an established model.Outcomes and results: Only a few participants indicated they had good knowledge of the BPRA. The responses additionally showed that the application of the BPRA varied between the participants and across clinical settings. Lacking SLP resources was stated to be the main perceived barrier for complying with the recommendations. The participants also stated that the BPRA requires adjustment to provide a partial basis for national clinical guidelines for aphasia and the need for national clinical guidelines to be adjusted to prevalent SLP resources.Conclusions: There are challenges in following up on some of the interventions that, according to both multinational recommendations and Swedish guidelines, should be given priority in the care of PWA. The barriers that are stated to complicate Swedish SLPs' compliance with some of the multinational recommendations are similar to the barriers posed by SLPs in other national studies on the uptake of aphasia rehabilitation recommendations. In Sweden, SLPs experience a lack of resources of various kinds to be able to fully comply with the BPRA.
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| 14. |
- Sandström, Linda, 1973-
(author)
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Impact of deep brain stimulation in the caudal zona incerta on voice tremor and speech in persons with essential tremor
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Objectives: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a symptomatic treatment for people with essential tremor (ET) who have unsatisfactory tremor relief with pharmacological treatment alone. A common symptom of ET is voice tremor, but only about 50% of patients with voice tremor get a satisfactory result with DBS. Moreover, stimulation-induced adverse effects on speech are often reported, especially with bilateral stimulation. In recent years, the caudal zona incerta (cZi) has been highlighted as a particularly efficient DBS-target for tremor; however, less is known about the effects of cZi-DBS on voice and speech. The aims of this thesis were to (i) describe how voice tremor and speech production are affected by habitual cZi-DBS optimized to treat the motor symptoms of ET, (ii) investigate how voice tremor and speech production are affected by unilateral cZi-stimulation at increasing amplitudes, with a particular focus on high-amplitude stimulation, and (iii) explore the extent to which patient characteristics and DBS related factors, such as electrode location and stimulation settings, influence the outcome.Methods: This thesis comprises two different study protocols. Study I was a retrospective study of 19 patients with ET and voice tremor, and DBS effects on voice tremor were evaluated from clinical assessments made at baseline and 1, 3, and 5 years after surgery, respectively. Studies II-V included 37 persons with ET, and DBS effects on voice tremor and speech production were evaluated off- and on habitual stimulation, as well as in an experimental protocol with unilateral stimulation at increasing amplitudes (up to a maximum of 4.5V). Voice tremor (study II, III) was assessed by two listeners using the Visual Sort and Rate (VISOR) method. Speech intelligibility (study IV) was estimated from orthographic transcriptions of nonsense sentences made by two speech-language pathology students. Speech function, including articulation and voice quality (study V) were analysed in 14 participants and assessed by two speech-language pathologists using VISOR. Voice and speech outcomes following the experimental stimulation condition were evaluated in relation to the location of the active electrode contacts.Results: Habitual cZi-DBS reduced voice tremor at all examinations and did not affect speech production on the group-level. By contrast, during unilateral high-amplitude stimulation, more negative effects on speech were noted, and the proportion of individuals with affected speech more than doubled at maximal amplitude stimulation compared with habitual cZi-DBS (40% compared to 17%). While most of these adverse effects were mild in general, a few participants exhibited more severe impairments of high-amplitude stimulation, especially on speech intelligibility and articulation. There were also cases in which high-amplitude stimulation worsened voice tremor or even induced the symptom. As for the contribution of electrode location, a deeper and more posterior stimulation origin were found to yield the most efficient voice tremor reduction, more medially located electrodes were associated with affected articulation, whereas deteriorated speech intelligibility was related to stimulation originating from a more superior location.Conclusions: cZi-DBS is relatively safe in the sense that adverse effects on speech production are rarely seen during stimulation with the clinical settings. Furthermore, voice tremor can be expected to improve, both short- and long- term, although not always to such an extent that the symptom is alleviated completely. However, by increasing the stimulation amplitude beyond the clinical setting, one increases the risk of inducing unwanted speech-related effects and worsen voice tremor. Thus, it appears as though the challenge in the postoperative management of the DBS treatment lies in maintaining the therapeutic effect while still keeping the stimulation amplitude at a low level. The combined results of this thesis indicate that the best outcome for voice and speech might be achieved by stimulating from the posterior-inferior-lateral part of the cZi.
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| 15. |
- Sandström, Linda, et al.
(author)
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Long-term effects of unilateral deep brain stimulation on voice tremor in patients with essential tremor
- 2019
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In: Parkinsonism & Related Disorders. - : Elsevier. - 1353-8020 .- 1873-5126. ; 60, s. 70-75
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- INTRODUCTION: Voice tremor (VT) is a common symptom of Essential tremor (ET). Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is an established treatment for ET overall, however, its effect on VT is less clear. The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term effects of DBS on VT and to investigate how VT symptoms develop over time in patients with ET.METHODS: VT scores for the cohort of 81 ET patients that had undergone DBS surgery in the caudal zona incerta (cZi) were analyzed retrospectively. Thirty-four patients had preoperative VT and long-term evaluations were available for 19 patients. Longitudinal effects of cZi-DBS were investigated 1, 3 and 5 years postoperatively. VT progression was evaluated based on preoperative-, and off stimulation postoperative assessments.RESULTS: Unilateral cZi-DBS reduced average voice tremor by 58% at the 3-year follow-up and by 67% 5 years after surgery. Four patterns of VT development were identified among patients, and the effectiveness of cZi-DBS in alleviating voice tremor symptoms showed differing patterns for these subgroups.CONCLUSIONS: This retrospective analysis of a small cohort of patients suggests that cZi-DBS may reduce VT in the long-term for patients with ET overall, but the pattern of VT progression likely influences the effectiveness of the treatment. These results also suggest that unilateral cZi-DBS may be more efficacious when treating patients with mild to moderate VT. A prospective, blinded, controlled clinical trial in patients with ET is needed to determine developmental patterns of VT, and the safety and efficacy of cZi-DBS for the treatment of VT.
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| 16. |
- Sandström, Linda, et al.
(author)
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Speech following DBS for essential tremor : Effects of chronic and high-amplitude stimulation in the posterior subthalamic area
- 2020
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Deep brain stimulation (DBS) can be very effective in alleviating tremor, but adverse effects on speech are frequently reported, especially following bilateral DBS. Most of the existing literature on DBS and speech deals with the effects of DBS targeting the subthalamic nucleus or the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus, which are the traditional targets for Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, respectively. More recently, the posterior subthalamic area (PSA) has been highlighted as a particularly effective target for tremor; however, there are limited studies of PSA-DBS effects on speech.We report speech outcomes for 14 persons with essential tremor during chronic PSA-DBS and at unilateral high-amplitude PSA-stimulation.The objectives were to answer the following questions:To what extent is speech function, and in particular articulation and voice, affected by chronic PSA-DBS?How is speech affected by unilateral high-amplitude stimulationIs bilateral chronic PSA-DBS worse for speech than unilateral PSA-stimulation?
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| 17. |
- Sandström, Linda, et al.
(author)
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Speech function following deep brain stimulation of the caudal zona incerta : effects of habitual and high-amplitude stimulation
- 2021
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In: Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. - : American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. - 1092-4388 .- 1558-9102. ; 64:6, s. 2121-2133
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Purpose: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is often successful in alleviating motor symptoms of essential tremor (ET); however, DBS may also induce adverse speech effects. The caudal zona incerta (cZi) is a promising DBS target for tremor, but less is known about the consequences of cZi DBS for speech. This preliminary study examined how habitual cZi DBS and cZi stimulation at high amplitudes may affect speech function in persons with ET.Method: Fourteen participants with ET were evaluated: off stimulation, on habitual cZi DBS, and with unilateral cZi stimulation at increasing stimulation amplitudes. At each stimulation condition, the participants read three 16-word sentences. Two speech-language pathologists made audio-perceptual consensus ratings of overall speech function, articulation, and voice using a visual sort and rate method. Rated functions when off stimulation, on habitual cZi DBS, and at maximal-amplitude stimulation were compared using Friedman nonparametric tests. For participants with bilateral habitual DBS (n = 5), the effects of bilateral and unilateral stimulation were described in qualitative terms.Results: Habitual cZi DBS had no significant group-level effect on any of the investigated speech parameters. Maximal-amplitude stimulation had a small but significant negative effect on articulation. Participants with reduced articulatory precision (n = 9) had more medially placed electrodes than the nonaffected group (n = 5). Bilateral and unilateral left stimulation had comparable effects on speech.Conclusions: Findings from this preliminary study of cZi DBS indicate that speech is generally not affected by stimulation at habitual levels. High-amplitude cZi stimulation may, however, induce adverse effects, particularly on articulation. Instances of decreased articulatory function were associated with stimulation of more medial electrode contacts, which could suggest cerebello-rubrospinal involvement.
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| 18. |
- Sandström, Linda, et al.
(author)
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The effects of deep brain stimulation on speech intelligibility in persons with essential tremor
- 2020
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In: Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. - : American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. - 1092-4388 .- 1558-9102. ; 63:2, s. 456-471
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Purpose: To investigate how deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the caudal zona incerta (cZi) affects speech intelligibility in persons with essential tremor (ET).Method: Thirty-five participants were evaluated: off stimulation, on chronic stimulation optimized to alleviate tremor, and during unilateral stimulation at increasing amplitude levels. At each stimulation condition, the participants read 10 unique nonsense sentences from the Swedish Test of Intelligibility. Two listeners, blinded to stimulation condition, transcribed all recorded sentences orthographically in a randomised procedure. A mean speech intelligibility score for each patient and stimulation condition was computed, and comparisons were made between scores off- and on stimulation.Results: Chronic cZi-DBS had no significant effect on speech intelligibility, and there was no difference in outcome between bilateral and unilateral treatments. During unilateral stimulation at increasing amplitudes, nine participants demonstrated deteriorating speech intelligibility. These nine participants were on average older and had more superior contacts activated during the evaluation compared with the participants without deterioration.Conclusions: Chronic cZi-DBS, optimized for tremor suppression, does not generally affect speech intelligibility in persons with ET. Furthermore, speech intelligibility may be preserved in many individuals, even when stimulated at high amplitudes. Adverse effects of high-amplitude unilateral stimulation observed in this study were associated with stimulation originating from a more superior location, as well as with the participants’ age. These results, highlighting age and stimulation location as contributing to speech intelligibility outcomes were, however, based on a limited number of individuals experiencing adverse effects with high-amplitude stimulation and should, therefore, be interpreted with caution.
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