Electropalatographic assessment of articulatory dysfunction in multiple sclerosis: A case study.

Electropalatography (EPG) was used to document the location and timing of tongue-to-palate contacts during speech production in a 52 year old male with dysarthria with a diagnosis of slow and progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). A group of four individuals with no neurological impairment served as controls. The subjects, while fitted with an acrylic EPG palate, read aloud a list containing six real words of CVC structure, each of which appeared five times in random order. Each of the target words was preceded by a neutral schwa. The word initial consonants analyzed included the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/, the alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/, alveolar lateral /l/, and the nasal stop /n/. For each word the vowel was /a/. The results showed that the subject with MS made contact between the tongue and palate in the correct anatomical location for each lingual consonant. His spatial configurations, however differed from those of the controls in the number of electrodes contacted. The subject with MS consistently made a greater contact with the palate than the controls for each sound. In addition, the subject with MS also demonstrated different temporal characteristics compared to the controls. During production of the alveolar stop /t/, the subject with MS had longer duration times than the controls, while for the fricative /s/, a shorter duration was observed. The findings are discussed in relation to their implications for the treatment of articulatory dysfunction in MS