NCT06402214

The 'Lombard Effect' in Patients Affected by Adductor Laryngeal Dystonia

The 'Lombard Effect' in Patients Affected by Adductor Laryngeal Dystonia: a Pilot Study

• Status: Not Yet Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 18 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Adductory spasmodic dysphonia (AdSD) is a rare condition characterised by irregular and uncontrolled voice interruptions, most commonly affecting women around the age of 45. The diagnosis is clinical and usually requires evaluation by several specialists. The exact cause is not known, but a disturbance of the motor system is hypothesised, probably related to various causes such as loss of cortical inhibition or problems with sensory input. Neuroimaging studies have shown hyperactivity in various brain regions during speech production in patients with AdSD, but it is still unclear whether this hyperactivity is due to a malfunction of auditory and somatosensory feedback or an impairment of motor programming. Recent research indicates that patients with AdSD show excessive muscle activation during phonation, probably due to abnormal processing of auditory feedback. This suggests that intervention in the auditory system may offer new treatment opportunities. The proposed study aims to describe the acoustic, auditory-perceptual and subjective voice and speech changes in AdSD subjects during the Quick-Lombard Test (LT), a test that assesses vocal response under noisy conditions.

Conditions

• Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Lombard test	In this study a single-subject enrolment session will be set up, with the presence of a dedicated physician for informed consent, the performance of a tonal audiometric examination and a clinical practice phoniatric examination for all enrolled subjects, the collection of voice recordings both before and during the Lombard Test (LT) and the administration of the rating scales both before and after the LT performance. For each subject, voice recordings will be made of the vowel /a/ sustained for at least four seconds with a comfortable tone and volume and of the speech obtained from the reading aloud and volume of normal conversation of a phonetically balanced text (The Desert) lasting about 1 minute, first in a silent condition and then in the presence of noise. Specifically, for the LT, each subject will be exposed to a free-fieldwhite noise of speech(SWN) administered through headphones. The intensity of the noise will be 70 dB SPL. Voice recordings will be made in a quiet room.

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-05-01
• Primary completion: 2025-04-30
• Completion: 2025-05-01
• First posted: 2024-05-07
• Last updated: 2024-05-07

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy