Major
Communicative Disorders
Advisor
Mahler, Leslie
Advisor Department
Communicative Disorders
Date
5-2020
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
Each year, according to parkinson.org, approximately 60,000 people in the US are diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (PD). PD is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects dopamine-producing neurons in the portion of the brain called the Substantia Nigra. Symptoms of PD include resting tremors, muscle rigidity, and speech difficulties regarding articulation and vocal quality. There is no cure for PD, however, pharmaceutical, behavioral, and surgical interventions such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) can be used to treat symptoms of PD. Although there is a significant amount of research regarding the effects of DBS in patients with PD, there is little evidence describing how DBS specifically affects speech and swallowing for individual patients with PD. This project is intended to analyze the impact of DBS on speech and swallowing in two patients with PD at follow up evaluations post-DBS implementation.