Abstract
We present the novel use of a neuroimaging technique, magnetoenceph-alography (MEG), for examining therapy-related changes in neural activity during a speech and a non-speech motor task in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Nine children (mean age = 4.2 years) with SSD were scanned in the MEG before and after an eight-week course of intensive motor speech therapy. MEG tasks involved an oromotor and a syllable production task. MEG analyses identified significant post-therapy changes in brain regions related to oromotor control and speech production. Behavioral assessments showed significant improvements on measures of motor speech skills and articulation following intervention. This is the first demonstration of the ability of MEG to: 1) capture brain activations resulting from oromotor movements and simple syllable production in young children, and 2) capture brain changes related to speech therapy. As the findings from this study are promising, we discuss directions for the design of future studies to further examine specific neural dysfunctions in speech sound disorders.
Highlights
The production of speech sounds requires the integration of several neural pathways and complex speech motor movements that require the control and coordination of multiple oral motor systems
We present the novel use of a neuroimaging technique, magnetoencephalography (MEG), for examining therapy-related changes in neural activity during a speech and a non-speech motor task in children with speech sound disorders (SSD)
Behavioral assessments showed significant improvements on measures of motor speech skills and articulation following intervention. This is the first demonstration of the ability of MEG to: 1) capture brain activations resulting from oromotor movements and simple syllable production in young children, and 2) capture brain changes related to speech therapy
Summary
The production of speech sounds requires the integration of several neural pathways and complex speech motor movements that require the control and coordination of multiple oral motor systems. Impairments or an inability to efficiently control and coordinate these motor systems would impact the accuracy of speech production and intelligibility. Speech sound disorders (SSD) are complex behavioural speech disorders in children, referring to deficits in motor speech control of the articulatory mechanisms (i.e., phonetic disorders, childhood apraxia of speech) and/or deficits in the general processing, organization, and cognitive representation of linguistic information. It is likely that children with SSD are a heterogeneous group at many levels, and vary in terms of their severity, error types, causal and maintenance factors. The etiology of most SSD is unknown. Differential diagnosis is often challenging in these children as they may show mixed profiles [1]
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