Dysarthria and mutism

Abstract

Dysarthria is a speech disorder associated with impairments of intelligibility, smoothness, loudness, and clarity of articulations. Dysarthria involves disability of reproducing various physical, tonal, and sound features of speech sounds in oral speech; unintelligible and slurred articulation with swallowing of sounds is characteristic. Articulatory movements and speech are slow, patients complain to the sensations of a 'thick' tongue and 'porridge' in the mouth. Patients'phrases are constructed correctly, vocabulary is not affected, and the grammatical structure of words is preserved. Reading, writing, internal speech, and understanding of speech are unaffected. Several types of dysarthria have been described on the basis of the lesion locations. Dysarthria can be associated with lacunar syndromes as well. Mutism represents a condition when patient cannot speak and answer the questions, but remains conscious and is able to produce written speech. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel.