Panying Rong

Abstract Introduction: Speech is organized into discrete utterances and pauses in accordance with underlying linguistic structure, temporal coordination, prosodic organization, and respiratory demands. Temporal speech characteristics, including rhythmic and pausing patterns, are governed by multiple neurophysiological mechanisms and provide valuable insights for the assessment and management of motor speech disorders.

Introduction Multiple sclerosis (MS), a debilitating disease of the central nervous system (CNS), is the most common cause of neurological disability in young adults (Wallin et al., 2019). People with MS (pwMS) display a range of motor, sensory and cognitive symptoms that can sometimes cause serious disability, although occasionally can be mild (Huang et al., 2017; Fielding and Clough, 2019).

To determine the mechanisms of speech intelligibility impairment due to neurologic impairments, intelligibility decline was modeled as a function of co-occurring changes in the articulatory, resonatory, phonatory, and respiratory subsystems. Sixty-six individuals diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) were studied longitudinally.