Perception of speech rate and intensity in Parkinson's disease

People with Parkinson’s disease showed significantly worse speech rate discrimination than age- and hearing-matched controls across speech, non-speech, and visual stimuli.

• Why it matters: Auditory perception changes in Parkinson’s disease are less understood than vision and proprioception, and linking speech acoustic perception to disease severity could clarify underlying neural mechanisms.
• What they did: Participants with Parkinson’s disease and matched controls completed perceptual discrimination and learning tasks for speech rate and intensity, with disease severity measured using the MDS-UPDRS.
• The result: Intensity discrimination accuracy was poorer with greater disease severity, while learning performance for rate and intensity manipulations did not differ between groups and was unrelated to disease severity.