Gait and speech are automatic motor activities which are frequently impaired in Parkinson's disease. Obvious clinical similarities exist between these disorders but were never investigated. We propose to determine whether there exist any common features in Parkinson's disease between spatiotemporal gait disorders and temporal speech disorders. Gait and speech were analysed on 11 Parkinsonian patients (PP) undergoing deep-brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) and 11 control subjects under three conditions of velocity (natural, slow and speed). The patients were tested with and without l-dopa and stimulator ON or OFF. Locomotor parameters were recorded using an optoelectronic system. Speech parameters were recorded with a headphone while subjects were reading a short paragraph. The results confirmed that PP walk and read more slowly than controls. Patient's difficulties in modulating walking and speech velocities seem to be due mainly to an inability to internally control the step length and the interpause-speech duration (ISD). STN-DBS and levodopa increased patients' walking velocity by increasing the step length. STN-DBS and levodopa had no effect on speech velocity but restored the patients' ability to modulate the ISD. The walking cadence and speech index of rythmicity tended to be lower in patients and were not significantly improved by STN-DBS or levodopa. Speech and walking velocity as well as ISD and step length were correlated in both groups. Negative correlations between speech index of and walking cadence were observed in both groups. Similar fundamental hypokinetic impairment and probably a similar rhythmic factor similarly affected the patients' speech and gait. These results suggest a similar physiopathological process in both walking and speaking dysfunction.

Voice quality analysis was performed in 88 normal speakers and 157 dysphonic speakers using a device that allows simultaneous study of acoustic and aerodynamic parameters during pronunciation of a sustained /a/. We compared the results with those of voice quality grading by a jury. The Mann-Whitney test showed significant differences between the grades of dysphonia for all the parameters chosen. Comparison of results (using discriminant factorial analysis) with perceptual evaluation by a jury showed concordance in 66.1%. Based on these preliminary results, the authors conclude that their protocol overlooks some relevant voice parameters like middle-term variations. Further study will be undertaken to take into account this type of variations.

International audienceThe aim of this contribution is to propose a database model designed for the storage and accessibility of various speech disorder data including signals, clinical evaluations and patients' information. This model is the result of 15 years of experience in the management and the analysis of this type of data. We present two important French corpora of voice and speech disorders that we have been recording in hospitals in Marseilles (MTO corpus) and Aix-en-Provence (AHN corpus). The population consists of 2500 dysphonic, dysarthric and control subjects, a number of speakers which, as far as we know, constitutes currently one of the largest corpora of " pathological " speech. The originality of this data lies in the presence of physiological data (such as oral airflow or estimated sub-glottal pressure) associated with acoustic recordings. This activity led us to raise the question of how we can manage the sound, physiological and clinical data of such a large quantity of data. Consequently, we developed a database model that we present here. Recommendations and technical solutions based on MySQL, a relational database management system, are discussed