Post Surgery Effects on VOT for Parkinson Disease STN/DBS Patients

Abstract

In this paper we discuss and analyse voice onset time (VOT) pre and post surgical treatment with deep brain stimulation (DBS) in 17 patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease (PD) at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. The patients were all at different stages of the disease but with the common denominator they have all undergone surgery to enhance synaptic responses through bilateral electrode implants in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) region of the brain, also known as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).The main focal point of the paper is to compare the pre and post surgery VOT data to see if there were any effects stemming from the STN surgery. Preliminary results for Mean VOT, Standard deviation VOT and percent of unsuccessfully produced/unmeasureable diadochokinetic syllable repetitions are presented and discussed. We found that the standard deviation decreased significantly for the consonant /p/ and this is discussed in the perspective of the ease of articulation of the different plosives.