Case discussions of variations in perceptual and articulatory kinematic measures among dysarthric speakers following mild and severe traumatic brain injury

The focus of the investigation was a case-by-case analysis of articulatory kinematics using electromagnetic articulography (EMA) in 16 individuals post-traumatic brain injury (TBI) (10 individuals with severe TBI [STBI]; mean age = 39.58 years, SD = 14.31; and 6 individuals with mild TBI [MTBI], mean age = 66.33 years, SD = 6.61) with varying levels of dysarthria severity. The case-by-case analysis revealed the specific characteristics of the dysarthric impairment in each TBI participant during/t/and/k/sentence and syllable repetition tasks. The results supported the existence of differential impairment for the syllable repetition task in speakers following MTBI and STBI. For the sentence productions, individuals with both mild and severe TBI demonstrated similar impairments in speed, generation of speed, range of movement, and duration for tongue-tip and tongue-back productions. These results may be the outcome of differing severity levels of TBI on speech for a simple task (syllable repetition) versus a complex task, namely sentence production, wherein individuals with both STBI and MTBI appeared to be similarly affected