Biomechanical characterization of phonation in Alzheimer´s Disease

Alzheimer´s Disease (AD) speech production is being classicaly studied under different aspects as prosody, rhythmic or semantics, phonation being an unexplored field. The present work is devoted to the study of several cases under the scope of phonation, including AD speakers and healthy controls. Temporal events with interest in phonation are studied. These include fillers (spontaneous voiced pauses or lengthenings), which may be characterized by phonation biomechanics. Discrimination capabilities of biomechanical estimates as fundamental frequency and vocal fold body stiffness are used in comparative hypothesis tests between the study cases and a normative database, and among themselves. The conclusions derived pose the problem of normative database design, and the continuation of the research including other biomechanical correlates.