This study classified speech impairment in 200 patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) into five levels of overall severity and described the corresponding type (voice, articulation, fluency) and extent (rated on a five-point scale) of impairment for each level. From two-minute conversational speech samples, parameters of voice, fluency and articulation were assessed by two trained-raters. Voice was found to be the leading deficit, most frequently affected and impaired to a greater extent than other features in the initial stages. Articulatory and fluency deficits manifested later, articulatory impairment matching voice impairment in frequency and extent at the `Severe' stage. At the final stage of `Profound' impairment, articulation was the most frequently impaired feature at the lowest level of performance. This study illustrates the prominence of voice and articulatory speech motor control deficits, and draws parallels with deficits of motor set and motor set instability in skeletal controls of gait and handwriting.

These [(11)C](R)-PK11195 PET findings show that the level of microglial activation correlates with Huntington disease (HD) severity. They lend support to the view that microglia contribute to the ongoing neuronal degeneration in HD and indicate that [(11)C](R)-PK11195 PET provides a valuable marker when monitoring the efficacy of putative neuroprotecting agents in this relentlessly progressive genetic disorder.

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The profile of cognitive performance shows selective and progressive dysfunction of attention and executive function in patients with mild to moderate HD, consistent with frontostriatal pathology at this stage of disease.

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