Predicting Early Bulbar Decline in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Speech Subsystem Approach

Table 3

Instrumentation and data acquisition settings for measurements of speech subsystem functions.

Subsystem	Instrument	Signal	Task	Measurements
Respiratory	Phonatory Aerodynamic System (PAS), KAYPentax	Aerodynamic	/pa/, /pi/	Maximum subglottal pressure
			Bamboo passage	Speech duration, pausing pattern (e.g., number of pauses, pause duration, pausing frequency)
Phonatory	Compact flash recorder, professional quality microphone, Countryman E6, Phonatory Aerodynamic System, KAYPentax	Acoustic, aerodynamic	“Normal” and “high pitch” phonation of /a/	Phonation duration, maximum F0, jitter, shimmer, NHR, SPL, laryngeal airway resistance
Articulatory	Eagle Digital System, Motion Analysis Corp.	Kinematic	“Buy Bobby a puppy”; “Say /aCa/ again”	Maximum/minimum velocities of lips and jaw
	Microphone	Acoustic	Repeat /ba/ as clear and as fast as possible on one breath	Number, duration, and rate of syllable repetitions
Resonatory	Nasometer, Model 6400, KAYPentax	Acoustic	“Mama made a lemon jam”; “Buy Bobby a puppy”	Nasalance
	Phonatory Aerodynamic System, KAYPentax	Aerodynamic	/pa/, /pi/, /ma/, /mi/, “hamper”	Intraoral air pressure and nasal airflow in syllables, time lag between /m/ and /p/ in “hamper”