Introduction: Hypokinetic dysarthria (HD) is a common motor speech symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD) which does not respond well to PD treatments. We investigated short-term effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on HD in PD using acoustic analysis of speech. Based on our previous studies we focused on stimulation of the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) - an auditory feedback area. Methods: In 14 PD patients with HD, we applied anodal, cathodal and sham tDCS to the right STG using a cross-over design. A protocol consisting of speech tasks was performed prior to and immediately after each stimulation session. Linear mixed models were used for the evaluation of the effects of each stimulation condition on the relative change of acoustic parameters. We also performed a simulation of the mean electric field induced by tDCS. Results: Linear mixed model showed a statistically significant effect of the stimulation condition on the relative change of median duration of silences longer than 50 ms (p = 0.015). The relative change after the anodal stimulation (mean = -5.9) was significantly lower as compared to the relative change after the sham stimulation (mean = 12.8), p = 0.014. We also found a correlation between the mean electric field magnitude in the right STG and improvement of articulation precision after anodal tDCS (R = 0.637; p = 0.019). Conclusions: The exploratory study showed that anodal tDCS applied over the auditory feedback area may lead to shorter pauses in a speech of PD patients.

简介：运动功能障碍（HD）是帕金森病（PD）常见的运动言语症状，对帕金森病治疗效果不佳。我们通过语音声学分析研究了经颅直流电刺激 (tDCS) 对 PD 患者 HD 的短期影响。根据我们之前的研究，我们重点关注右颞上回（STG）——听觉反馈区域的刺激。方法：在 14 名患有 HD 的 PD 患者中，我们采用交叉设计将阳极、阴极和假 tDCS 应用于右侧 STG。在每次刺激之前和之后立即执行由语音任务组成的方案。采用线性混合模型评估每种刺激条件对声学参数相对变化的影响。我们还对 tDCS 感应的平均电场进行了模拟。结果：线性混合模型显示，刺激条件对超过 50 ms 的中位沉默持续时间的相对变化有统计学上的显着影响 ( p  = 0.015)。阳极刺激后的相对变化（平均值 = -5.9）明显低于假刺激后的相对变化（平均值 = 12.8），p  = 0.014。我们还发现右侧 STG 的平均电场强度与阳极 tDCS 后关节精度的提高之间存在相关性（R  = 0.637；p  = 0.019）。结论：探索性研究表明，在听觉反馈区域应用阳极 tDCS 可能会导致 PD 患者言语停顿更短。