NCT06164717

Behavioral and Neural Characteristics of Adaptive Speech Motor Control

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 507 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Washington · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 4 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study meets the NIH definition of a clinical trial, but is not a treatment study. Instead, the goal of this study is to investigate how hearing ourselves speak affects the planning and execution of speech movements. The study investigates this topic in both typical speakers and in patients with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) implants. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does the way we hear our own speech while talking affect future speech movements? * Can the speech of DBS patients reveal which brain areas are involved in adjusting speech movements? Participants will read words, sentences, or series of random syllables from a computer monitor while their speech is being recorded. For some participants, an electrode cap is also used to record brain activity during these tasks. And for DBS patients, the tasks will be performed with the stimulator ON and with the stimulator OFF.

Conditions

• Speech

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Auditory feedback perturbation during speech	The intervention consists of manipulating real-time auditory feedback during speech production. In our lab, such feedback perturbations can be implemented with either a stand-alone digital vocal processor (a device commonly used by singers and the music industry) or with software-based signal processing routines (see Equipment section for details). Note that the study does not investigate the efficacy of these hardware or software methods to induce behavioral change in subjects' speech. Rather, the study addresses basic experimental questions regarding the general role of auditory feedback in the central nervous system's control of articulatory speech movements.
BEHAVIORAL	Visual feedback perturbation during reaching	The intervention consists of manipulating real-time visual feedback during upper limb reaching movements. In our lab, such feedback perturbations can be implemented with a virtual reality display system.
OTHER	DBS stimulation ON/OFF	Patients who have been previously implanted with a DBS stimulator for their clinical care will be tested in two speech motor learning tasks with the stimulation ON and with the stimulation OFF. Note that (1) patients routinely turn the stimulation OFF and back ON (examples are, for some patients, to sleep, to save battery, etc), and (2) we are not in any way evaluating the stimulator itself or its clinical effectiveness but only whether or not two forms of speech motor learning (adaptation to auditory feedback perturbation and speech sequence learning) are affected differently by having the stimulation ON or OFF. implant ON/OFF prior to participation in the speech auditory-motor learning tasks and speech sequence learning tasks. This intervention can be implemented by the subject themselves as all patients have a hand- held controlled that they use to switch stimulation ON/OFF.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-01-01
• Primary completion: 2027-12-31
• Completion: 2027-12-31
• First posted: 2023-12-11
• Last updated: 2023-12-11

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States