Motor speech disorders are a type of speech disorder that typically affects children. These disorders can interfered with movement, communication and hearing. Motor speech disorders can also be more difficult to diagnose than other types of speech disorders because they do not always show up on standard medical tests. If you have any doubts about your child’s motor speech disorder, you should speak to a doctor.
What are motor speech disorders?
Communication between the brain and the speech mechanism may be disrupted or destroyed in certain circumstances. As a result, it is difficult to regulate or coordinate the muscles of the larynx, the face, and the tongue in order to speak. A motor speech disorder occurs when a child has difficulty producing speech because of problems with motor planning or muscle tone. The two main categories of motor speech disorders are dysarthria and apraxia.
Motor Speech Disorders
What is dysarthria?
Dysarthria refers to a condition where your speech muscles are weak or difficult to control. A person with dysarthria may have difficulty comprehending slurred or sluggish speech. There are several possible causes of dysarthria.
Additionally, these include nervous system abnormalities, illnesses that cause facial paralysis, tongue or throat muscular weakness, and nervous system disorders. Several drugs may also cause dysarthria.
If the underlying cause of your dysarthria is addressed, your speech may sound better. Additionally, you may require speech therapy. It may be beneficial to change or discontinue prescription medications if they are causing dysarthria.
Dysarthria Symptoms
- Talking in a slur
- A slow pace of speech
- Loudness or the inability to speak loudly
- Unintelligible rapid speech
- A nasal or raspy voice
- Rhythmic irregularities in speech
- Uneven volume of speech
- Speech in monotone
- Face or tongue movements are difficult
Dysarthria Causes
If you have dysarthria, you may have trouble moving the speech-controlling muscles in your lips, face, or upper respiratory system. The following conditions can cause dysarthria.
- ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)
- Injury to the brain
- Tumor of the brain
- Paralysis due to cerebral palsy
- Syndrome of Guillain-Barre
- Injury to the head
- Diseases associated with Huntington’s
- Infection with Lyme
- Sclerosis multiplex
- Dystrophia muscularis
- Idiopathic myasthenia gravis
- Diseases associated with Parkinson’s
- Having a stroke
- Diseases associated with Wilson’s
Dysarthria Diagnosis
A speech-language pathologist may assess your speech to determine the type of dysarthria you have. This may be useful to the neurologists who will investigate the underlying cause of the problem.
A physical examination may be combined with tests to detect underlying disorders, such as:
- An imaging test, such as an MRI or CT scan, can provide doctors with a thorough picture of your brain, head, and neck that can assist them in determining the cause of your speech problem.
- Brain studies may assist you in identifying the cause of your symptoms. An electroencephalogram (EEG) can be used to measure your brain’s electrical activity.
- Measurement of brain electrical activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG)
- An electromyogram (EMG) measures your muscles’ electrical impulses
- If an infectious or inflammatory illness is causing your symptoms, blood and urine tests may assist identify the condition.
- The doctor can take a little sample of your brain tissue for testing if they believe you have a brain tumor.
- Among other abilities, neuropsychological evaluations assess your capacity for thought, verbal comprehension, reading comprehension, and writing comprehension. Dysarthria does not affect your cognitive abilities or your ability to comprehend speech.
Preventing dysarthria
Dysarthria may be difficult to avoid since a variety of situations can bring it on. But leading a healthy lifestyle that minimizes your risk of stroke may lessen your chances of dysarthria.
- Make sure you exercise regularly.
- Maintain a healthy weight.
- Eat more fruits and vegetables
- Diet plan.
- Keep cholesterol, saturated fat, and salt to a minimum
- Drink alcohol in moderation.
- Do not smoke or breathe secondhand smoke.
- If your doctor has not prescribed the drug, do not take it.
- Control your blood pressure.
- Diabetics should consult their doctor
- Don’t deviate from your doctor’s recommendations.
- When you suffer from obstructive sleep apnea
- Get treatment for sleep apnea.
What is apraxia?
Apraxia is a lack of understanding regarding apraxia, a neurological disorder. It is difficult or impossible for those with it to perform certain motor functions despite having normal muscles. Dyspraxia is a less severe form of apraxia.
There are several ways in which apraxia can manifest. Apraxia of the orofacial region is one variation. Certain facial muscle movements cannot be performed spontaneously due to orofacial apraxia. For example, they may not be able to blink or lick their lips. Another type of apraxia impairs a person’s ability to move his or her arms or legs consciously.
Symptoms of Apraxia of Speech
- Inability to string syllables together in the appropriate order to form words
- Babbling during infancy is minimal
- Having trouble pronouncing complex or long words
- Attempts to pronounce words repeatedly
- When you can speak correctly at certain times, but not at others, you have speech inconsistencies
- Words with incorrect inflections or stresses
- Communication using nonverbal methods excessively
- Vowel sounds are distorted
- Words without consonants at the beginning and end
- Struggling to make words or groping
Causes Apraxia of Speech
Speech-language pathologists must conduct a thorough speech and language examination on children with apraxia of vocabulary in order to get an accurate diagnosis (SLP). The SLP will ask your family for details about how your kid communicates at home and in other settings and assess your child’s speech, language, and communication skills.
To accurately identify your kid and rule out any other potential diagnoses, the SLP examining your child must have experience and skill in diagnosing and treating childhood apraxia of speech. For instance, due to poor speech intelligibility, severe articulation disorders and infantile apraxia of speech are sometimes mistaken for one another. Unfortunately, treating an articulation issue uses a very different strategy than treating infantile apraxia of speech, and mixing up the two might lead to less progress in treatment.
Since many children with childhood apraxia of speech have language deficiencies, an examination for this condition must include looking at your child’s expressive. Children with apraxia of speech often struggle with word recall, word order confusion, and gaps in their receptive and expressive language abilities.
Apraxia Treatment
Depending on how severe your child’s apraxia is, treatment should be intense and may endure for many years. There are several advantages for kids with childhood apraxia of speech, including:
- During therapy, sound sequences, and phrases are repeated and practiced repeatedly
- Using visual prompts to demonstrate how words are formed from sound sequences
- Having the child say the word while the SLP or caregiver listens
In conclusion,Motor Speech Disorders can be a challenge for those with the disorder. However, with the right care and support, those treated can have a successful outcome.
