Module 1: Defining, Understanding, and Categorizing Motor Speech Disorders

Flashcards covering the foundational definitions, categories, and classification systems of motor speech disorders based on Joe Duffy's text and the Mayo Clinic approach.

Motor speech disorders

A group of speech disorders resulting from neurologic impairments affecting the planning, programming, control, or execution of speech.

Dysarthrias

A collective name for a group of neurologic speech disorders reflecting abnormalities in the strength, speed, range, steadiness, tone, or accuracy of movements needed for speech production.

Apraxia of speech (AOS)

A neurologic speech disorder reflecting an impaired capacity to plan or program the sensorimotor commands needed for directing movements that result in phonetically and prosodically normal speech.

Planning and programming

The motor speech process of selecting and sequencing sensory motor programs for phonemes and syllables.

Motor control

The regulation and modulation of motor output via the cerebellar and basal ganglia control circuits.

Neuromuscular execution

The process by which the central and peripheral nervous systems innervate and monitor muscles to produce an acoustic signal.

Cognitive linguistic disorder

Disorders involving problems with generating thoughts, regulating feelings, or semantic knowledge, rather than primary language or speech deficits.

Aphasia

A disorder involving the conversion of ideas into a code that follows the rules of language.

Ataxic dysarthria

A type of dysarthria resulting from damage in the cerebellar control circuit, affecting movement coordination.

Hypokinetic dysarthria

A dysarthria often associated with Parkinson disease, resulting from damage in the basal ganglia control circuit.

Hyperkinetic dysarthria

A dysarthria associated with involuntary movements, often resulting from basal ganglia control circuit damage such as in Huntington's chorea.

Spastic dysarthria

An execution-level dysarthria resulting from bilateral damage to the upper motor neurons.

Flaccid dysarthria

An execution-level dysarthria resulting from damage to the lower motor neurons.

Unilateral upper motor neuron dysarthria

A dysarthria resulting from damage to the upper motor neurons on only one side of the central nervous system.

Functional speech disorders

Speech abnormalities arising through unwilled learning or maladaptive responses without identifiable structural neurologic disease.

Perceptual analysis

The clinical gold standard for assessing motor speech disorders, relying on auditory-perceptual analysis of the speech signal supplemented by visual and tactile observation.

Instrumental methods

Assessment approaches including acoustic analysis, physiologic measurement (like EMG), and visual imaging methods (like video fluoroscopy).

Darley, Aronson, and Brown (DAB)

Mayo Clinic researchers who pioneered the perceptually based classification system for dysarthrias in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mayo Clinic data (2009-2019)

A study of 13,000 patients showing that motor speech disorders accounted for nearly 50% of acquired neurologic communication disorder diagnoses.

Mixed dysarthria

A category representing any combination of the original six dysarthria subtypes identified by Darley, Aronson, and Brown.

Undetermined dysarthria

A classification used when a clinician recognizes a dysarthria is present but cannot confidently assign it to a specific subtype.

Bulbar onset ALS

A presentation of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis where dysarthria is the first and sometimes only symptoms of the disease.