Program
Speech and Hearing Sciences
College
Arts and Sciences
Student Level
Master's
Start Date
7-11-2019 4:00 PM
End Date
7-11-2019 5:00 PM
Abstract
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative neurological disease that affects 7% of people who have had at least one instance of a moderate to severe concussion. There are multiple populations that have an increased risk of developing this disorder including military veterans who have been exposed to blast damage, victims of domestic violence, and athletes who participate in events that expose them to repeated head trauma. This project examines the speech characteristics of one specific group of athletes that includes professional fighters: boxers and mixed martial artists. The population that was examined for this thesis are the participants in the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study (PFBHS) out of the Cleveland Clinic in Los Vegas, NV. As it is not possible to diagnose CTE except at autopsy, it is not possible to say how many of the participants included in this study may have CTE. The PFBHS is a longitudinal study that is compiling a database of information about the consequences of repeated head trauma. The participants are evaluated once a year, and one of the administered tasks is a speech sample obtained by asking participants to read the first paragraph of the Rainbow Passage. This project centers around the analysis of these speech samples for speech rate, placement of pauses and the duration of pauses, and the frequency and type of other disfluencies that may be indicative of a neurological injury. The current body of literature includes many studies that include a mention of disordered speech in persons with repeated head trauma, however, there is little discussion of the characteristics of speech. Researchers describe the speech of person with CTE as "Parkinsonian" or "dysarthric. There are very few studies that include specific descriptions of speech and prosody for persons diagnosed with CTE. This project is intended to contribute to the body of literature that describes specific speech patterns for persons with repeated head injuries.
Speech Characteristics of Professional Fighters
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative neurological disease that affects 7% of people who have had at least one instance of a moderate to severe concussion. There are multiple populations that have an increased risk of developing this disorder including military veterans who have been exposed to blast damage, victims of domestic violence, and athletes who participate in events that expose them to repeated head trauma. This project examines the speech characteristics of one specific group of athletes that includes professional fighters: boxers and mixed martial artists. The population that was examined for this thesis are the participants in the Professional Fighters Brain Health Study (PFBHS) out of the Cleveland Clinic in Los Vegas, NV. As it is not possible to diagnose CTE except at autopsy, it is not possible to say how many of the participants included in this study may have CTE. The PFBHS is a longitudinal study that is compiling a database of information about the consequences of repeated head trauma. The participants are evaluated once a year, and one of the administered tasks is a speech sample obtained by asking participants to read the first paragraph of the Rainbow Passage. This project centers around the analysis of these speech samples for speech rate, placement of pauses and the duration of pauses, and the frequency and type of other disfluencies that may be indicative of a neurological injury. The current body of literature includes many studies that include a mention of disordered speech in persons with repeated head trauma, however, there is little discussion of the characteristics of speech. Researchers describe the speech of person with CTE as "Parkinsonian" or "dysarthric. There are very few studies that include specific descriptions of speech and prosody for persons diagnosed with CTE. This project is intended to contribute to the body of literature that describes specific speech patterns for persons with repeated head injuries.
