If Sona Patel\u2019s research continues as she expects, soon doctors \u2014 and even patients themselves \u2014 may be able to detect Parkinson\u2019s disease using a simple voice test.<\/p>\n
An assistant professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology, Patel is already several years into her quest, having landed a three-year, $380,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health in 2014. She\u2019s still in the testing phase, but says the results have been promising so far.<\/p>\n
When a person has Parkinson\u2019s disease, it not only causes tremors, muscle stiffness and loss of balance, it also affects speech. \u201cPeople with Parkinson\u2019s will often speak in a quieter voice, and it may sound breathier,\u201d Patel says. \u201cVolume is a big concern for spouses and family members, because they can\u2019t hear them. It makes communication really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patel, who serves as director of the University\u2019s Voice Analytics and Neuropsychology (VAN) Lab and who collaborates with colleagues at Hackensack Meridian Health, is looking into why those speech changes happen. She hopes the information will help her develop tools that can detect the neurological disease simply by examining someone\u2019s voice. Ideally, she says, a test could take the form of a smartphone app.<\/p>\n
The goal isn\u2019t to replace neurologists, but rather to offer an early and noninvasive test that general practitioners could use in their offices or that patients could use to screen themselves at home. If the voice test indicates possible Parkinson\u2019s, a specialist referral and higher-level tests would follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one goes in to have a routine MRI or a routine spinal tap,\u201d Patel says. \u201cBut if you had something that was cheap, noninvasive \u2014 hey, why not try it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Patel grew up in Illinois and says science and math were prized in her house. Her father is a physician and her mother, who holds a master\u2019s degree in chemistry, manages his medical practice.<\/p>\n
As an undergraduate at Boston University, Patel switched from a biomedical engineering major to electrical engineering. But just before her senior year, a summer research job got her hooked on the science of speech.<\/p>\n
She worked in a lab exploring speech intelligibility \u2014 the technology that powers voice-recognition programs like Siri and dictation software. The research applied to people with hearing difficulties, including hearing-aid wearers and those with cochlear implants.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really liked seeing that it had a clinical application rather than just a military or speech tech application,\u201d Patel says. Up until that point, she\u2019d struggled to envision how her electrical engineering work could directly affect people.<\/p>\n
Patel enrolled in a communication sciences and disorders program at the University of Florida and earned her Ph.D. there in 2009.<\/p>\n
In her current Parkinson\u2019s lab test, Patel has patients come in and make a long \u201cahhh\u201d sound while hearing their voices fed back through headphones. She asks subjects to hold the sound steady, but inserts pitch variations in the audio that\u2019s coming into their headphones. The human voice naturally corrects for those errors \u2014 so if Patel makes the \u201cahhh\u201d swoop up, a participant will naturally correct the sound they\u2019re producing to compensate for the discrepancy.<\/p>\n
Patel has found that people with Parkinson\u2019s disease overcompensate when they hear the voice errors, and she thinks that\u2019s because the disease reduces their ability to control their voice.<\/p>\n
In an even newer set of findings, Patel has discovered that people with Parkinson\u2019s take longer to respond to the pitch errors than those who don\u2019t have the disease.<\/p>\n
Outside of her own research, Patel teaches several courses at Seton Hall \u2014 graduate, undergraduate and online \u2014 and says guiding students gives her work even deeper meaning.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the same kind of feeling you get when you do research to help improve the lives of patients or people with disorders,\u201d she adds. \u201cYou teach someone and see their face light up when they understand what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Written by Molly Petrilla<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New research by Sona Patel could lead to a simple voice test that detects Parkinson’s disease. <\/p>\n