Session Information
Date: Monday, October 8, 2018
Session Title: Parkinson's Disease: Psychiatric Manifestations
Session Time: 1:15pm-2:45pm
Location: Hall 3FG
Objective: To assess the acoustic differences between PD patients and healthy control (HC), the participants’ perception of their vocal characteristics and the relation of the acoustic characteristics to depression and quality of life (QOL).
Background: Vocal characteristics associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD) are part of hypokinetic dysarthria. Acoustic correlates of PD have a potential to provide biomarkers for depression.
Methods: The study included 26 PD patients (8 females) and 13 HC. All participants underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the voice handicapped index (VHI) and the Beck depression inventory (BDI). The PD patients underwent the Parkinson’s disease quality of life questionnaire (PDQ8), Hoehn & Yahr scale (H&Y), and the researchers assessed the participants’ voice quality using the Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, Asthenia & strain (GRBAS) score. All participants were recorded while performing a long /A/, reading a phonetically balanced paragraph and during spontaneous speech. An acoustic analysis that included pitch and Root Mean Score (RMS) was performed using digital signal processing.
Results: PD patients’ mean Hoehn&Yahr 2.8±0.97; disease duration 7.84±5.36 and PDQ8 11.5±6.55. Mean age of PD/HC 67.26±11.28/68.70 ±4.47 respectively; MoCA, VHI, BDI and GRBAS mean score of PD/HC 20.73±5.76/ 27.15±1.95; 37.07± 32.8/5.07±3.87; 4.46±4.32/0.69±1.06 1.38±0.92/0±0 (p<0.001) respectively. Significant difference was noted in RMS MAX between PD patients 29.04±14.61 and HC 5.07±0.96. A positive correlation was noted between PD patients' BDI, PDQ8 and VHI scores (p<0.05). A positive tendency was observed between PDQ8 score and RMS 378.68 ±346.85 in spontaneous speech (p=0.06). No correlation was noted between BDI and acoustic measurements. In the HC group a positive correlation was noted between pitch (1.06±0.13) and GRBAS (0±0; p<0.05) score during reading.
Conclusions: The vocal characteristics of PD patients perceived by the patients and examiners was worse than the HC. Patients with greater variability in acoustic energy seemed to have better QOL. Acoustic characteristics were not correlated with depression scale in this pilot study.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Y. Manor, S. Naor, D. Shpunt, N. Diamant, N. Zivion, L. Hayat, A. Yaron, A. Hillel, A. Ezra, I. Opher, Y. Hauptman, R. Aloni-Lavi, A. Faust-Socher, T. Gurevich. Acoustic analysis and subjective vocal perception of Parkinson’s disease patients and healthy control and the relation to depression and quality of life [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2018; 33 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/acoustic-analysis-and-subjective-vocal-perception-of-parkinsons-disease-patients-and-healthy-control-and-the-relation-to-depression-and-quality-of-life/. Accessed June 14, 2025.« Back to 2018 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/acoustic-analysis-and-subjective-vocal-perception-of-parkinsons-disease-patients-and-healthy-control-and-the-relation-to-depression-and-quality-of-life/