Vocal markers from sustained phonation in Huntington's Disease

TL;DR

This study explores the potential of vocal markers from sustained phonation as early indicators for Huntington's Disease, highlighting their predictive value for clinical performance but limitations in identifying preclinical carriers.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel analysis of phonatory and modulation spectrum features for Huntington's Disease diagnosis and monitoring, emphasizing their predictive capabilities.

Findings

Phonatory features predict clinical performance in Huntington's Disease.

Phonation alone is insufficient to identify preclinical gene carriers.

Modulation Power Spectrum features contribute to disease assessment.

Abstract

Disease-modifying treatments are currently assessed in neurodegenerative diseases. Huntington's Disease represents a unique opportunity to design automatic sub-clinical markers, even in premanifest gene carriers. We investigated phonatory impairments as potential clinical markers and propose them for both diagnosis and gene carriers follow-up. We used two sets of features: Phonatory features and Modulation Power Spectrum Features. We found that phonation is not sufficient for the identification of sub-clinical disorders of premanifest gene carriers. According to our regression results, Phonatory features are suitable for the predictions of clinical performance in Huntington's Disease.