The Motor Speech Disorders Laboratory is located in 108/110 Cary Hall. The lab conducts research investigating the acoustic bases of reduced intelligibility and naturalness in dysarthria secondary to neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis. One line of research aims to specify behavioral therapy techniques for dysarthria yielding improvements in speech intelligibility and naturalness – and the underlying supralaryngeal and prosodic adjustments responsible for those improvements. Other research is examining longitudinal communication outcomes for individuals with Parkinson’s disease who have received bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS). The lab is funded by several grants from the National Institutes of Health.
