Acquired non-specific stuttering in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease predominantly characterized by tremor, bradykinesia, and rigor. In addition to motor and non-motor manifestations of Parkinson’s disease, there are a number of symptoms, including speech disorders and other cognitive impairments. The most common speech symptoms are bradylalia, dysarthria, hypophonia and impaired prosody. Cognitive changes that occur in the prodromal phase of PD include impairment in executive functions and working memory, followed by impairment in attention and verbal fluency, and that is before the motor characteristics of PD become visible. The aim of the study is to present the case of a 74-year-old patient with Parkinson’s disease who has speech and language difficulties and atypical speech disfluency. Diagnostic processing was performed using a clinical battery of tests for speech – language assessment and neuropsychological assessment. The results of the speech – language assessment indicate significantly reduced intelligence due to non-specific speech disfluency and inaccurate articulation, difficulty in organizing spontaneous expression and understanding grammatical structures, impaired phonemic verbal fluency and difficulties in receptive vocabulary. Neuropsychological processing indicated diffuse deterioration of the examined cognitive functioning to be larger than expected when taking ito consideration the age and probably good premorbid abilities of this person.