Objective: This study aimed to examine the impact that sleep disorders and disturbances have on speech intensity in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: PD is a neurodegenerative disease with 60%-90% of individuals experiencing sleep disturbances (Schütz et al., 2022) and 89% with impaired communication abilities (Dashtipour et al., 2018). In the general population, sleep loss leads to problems with cognition and social interactions (Lim & Dinges, 2010; Beattie et al., 2015). In addition, communication difficulties in PD are associated with reduced overall quality of life, withdrawal from social interactions, and decreased participation (Miller et al., 2006). This pilot study aimed to examine the relationship between sleep disturbances and speech symptoms as this has the potential to inform motor speech disorder evaluation and treatment.

Method: Seven individuals (4 females, age 63-87) with PD were recruited for this study. Exclusion criteria included MCI (<26 MOCA score) and hearing impairment (60dB at 500, 1000, 2000Hz). The Parkinson’s Disease Sleep Scale 2 (PDSS-2) and The Voice Handicap Index (VHI) were used to assess the degree of impact of sleep and communication disturbances. Objective measures of speech intensity (dB) were analyzed with Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2011) from a vowel prolongation, speech magnitude test, and a conversational speech task in each of the following speaking contexts: no noise, 6 meter interlocuter distance, and a 65dB background noise condition.

Results: Participants were divided into Group 1 and Group 2 (low vs high PDSS-2 scores). RM-ANOVA indicated a significant effect of group (F (1, 4) = 8.67, p = .042, partial η2 = .68) such that individuals with PD and high PDSS-2 scores had significantly lower speech intensity across all speech tasks. Results revealed a between-group trend in the maximum loudness task only, suggesting that this task may help to differentiate between the two groups.

Conclusion: Preliminary findings indicate that effective communication for participants with higher sleep disorder scores may be more difficult than for those with lower sleep disorder scores. The results of this pilot study highlight the need for further examination of the impact of sleep disorder on speech and communication.

References: Beattie, L., Espie, C. A., Kyle, S. D., & Biello, S. M. (2015). How are normal sleeping controls selected? A systematic review of cross-sectional insomnia studies and a standardized
method to select healthy controls for sleep research. Sleep medicine, 16(6), 669–677.

Dashtipour K, Tafreshi A, Lee J, Crawley B. Speech disorders in Parkinson’s disease: pathophysiology, medical management and surgical approaches. Neurodegener Dis Manag. 2018 Oct;8(5):337-348.

Lim, J., & Dinges, D. F. (2010). A meta-analysis of the impact of short-term sleep deprivation on cognitive variables. Psychological bulletin, 136(3), 375–389.

Miller, N., Noble, E., Jones, D., & Burn, D. (2006). Life with communication changes in Parkinson’s disease. Age and ageing, 35(3), 235–239.

Schütz L, Sixel-Döring F, Hermann W. Management of Sleep Disturbances in Parkinson’s Disease. J Parkinsons Dis. 2022;12(7):2029-2058.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/exploring-the-influence-of-sleep-disorders-on-speech-intensity-in-individuals-with-parkinsons-disease/