Study on the speech features of Parkinson's disease patients / Syazana Kamarulzaman, Nur Ainin Sofea Mohamad and Natasya Izehar

Parkinson's disease (PD) could be a neurodegenerative disorder that results in a progressive deterioration of motor function caused by lack of dopamine-producing brain cells. Neurodegenerative disorder is a term for a range of condition which affect the neuron (nerve cells) in human brain. As there are different approach in the method of analysis used to study the difference of prosodic characteristics between the groups of PDs and health control in the task of reading and monologue. hence this study intent to scrutinize whether the same conclusion can be driven by using different method of analysis. The objective of this study is to study whether there is a significant different early untreated Parkinson's disease patients, patients with rapid eye movement behavior disorder and health control and to study the association between patients with Parkinson's disease and patients with rapid eye movement behavior disorder with the history of Parkinson's disease in family. Furthermore, the method of this study is Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and Cochran-Mantel Haenszel Test. The results of the finding from the speech features in monologue tasks for PD patients and RBD patients appear to be different from that control group while the speech features in reading tasks between Parkinson' disease patients and control group also appear to be different. In the conclusion, it is also recommended to conduct study in the speech features of Parkinson's disease patients in Malaysia to know whether the speech features of Parkinson's disease patients in Malaysia are distinct to the health control which also known as the control group.