An ultrasound investigation of tongue shape in stroke patients with lingual hemiparalysis.
BACKGROUND
Stroke can cause hemilateral paresis of the tongue. The present study investigated the functional consequences of a lingual hemiparalysis on the symmetry and the grooving of the tongue in the coronal plane during the production of vowel-consonant-vowel sequences. The hypotheses were that, because of the lingual hemiparalysis, the stroke patients' tongue shapes would be (1) more asymmetrical and (2) less grooved than the tongues of the control speakers.


METHODS
The participants in this prospective data collection were 9 stroke patients with lingual hemiparalysis and 6 control speakers. All participants produced vowel-consonant-vowel sequences with the vowels [a, i, and u] and the target consonants [k, t, ∫, s, and r]. The tongue shape in the coronal plane was traced and measured. The outcome measures were asymmetry and midlingual concavity. The participants and controls were compared using repeated measures analyses of variance with post hoc Scheffé tests.


RESULTS
There were no significant differences in asymmetry. There was significantly reduced midlingual concavity for the stroke patients (F[1, 13] = 8.78; P < .05). There was also a within-subjects effect for consonant (F[4, 50] = 14.26; P < .01). Post hoc testing with Scheffé tests indicated that the consonant [k] had significantly lower grooving than the other consonant sounds (P < .05).


CONCLUSIONS
The hemilateral paresis affected not the symmetry but the midlingual grooving. Residual ipsilateral innervation in the hemiparalyzed tongue may help patients compensate. More research is needed to assess the impact of the intrinsic deformation of the tongue on speech acceptability and intelligibility in patients with a lingual hemiparalysis.
['Bressmann|Tim|T|', 'Koch|Sina|S|', 'Ratner|Amanda|A|', 'Seigel|Joanne|J|', 'Binkofski|Ferdinand|F|']
D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D000704:Analysis of Variance D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D010291:Paresis D015203:Reproducibility of Results D020521:Stroke D014059:Tongue D014463:Ultrasonography D055815:Young Adult
ultrasound tongue Stroke hemiparalysis speech