Hypophonia in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Effective improvement of IPD hypophonia following voice treatment with VT was accompanied by a reduction of cortical motor-premotor activations, resembling the functional pattern observed in healthy volunteers and suggesting normalization, and additional recruitment of right anterior insula, caudate head, putamen, and DLPFC. This treatment-dependent functional reorganization suggests a shift from an abnormally effortful (premotor cortex) to a more automatic (basal ganglia, anterior insula) implementation of speech-motor actions.