Speech Motor Control

Ben Maassen (Professor of Neurolinguistics - Dyslexia) has a background in cognitive neuropsychology and speech-language pathology. He is project coordinator in the Dutch Dyslexia Programme, leader of projects on speech motor control and developmental neuropsychological disorders, and teacher in the master-programme Speech-Language Pathology and research-master programmes Clinical Linguistics (Erasmus Mundus) and Cognitive Neuroscience. Main research areas are neurogenic speech disorders, perception-production modelling, dyslexia and neurocognitive precursors of literacy. As a Clinical Neuropsychologist he is coordinator of an expertise centre for children with speech and language disorders. Pascal van Lieshout is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Toronto, a Canada Research (II) in Oral Motor Function, and director of the Oral Dynamics Lab. His interest is in oral motor control in speech and swallowing with a focus on applying Dynamical Systems Theory in these areas of research. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in international journals, books and conference proceedings and is renowned for his studies of articulation in speech motor disorders, in particular stuttering.

SECTION ONE: MODELLING OF SPEECH PRODUCTION ; 1. Apraxia of speech: what the deconstruction of phonetic plans tells us about the construction of articulate language ; 2. Phonemic, sensory and motor representations in an action-based neurocomputational model of speech production (ACT) ; 3. Control of movement precision in speech production ; 4. Variability of North American English /r/ production in response to palatal pertubation ; SECTION 2: GENETICS AND NEUROLOGY ; 5. Brain imaging in children ; 6. Motor speech profile in relation to site of brain pathology ; 7. Cerebral control of motor aspects of speech production: neurophysiological and functional imaging data ; SECTION 3: SPEECH MOTOR DEVELOPMENT ; 8. Dynamic interaction of motor and language factors in normal and disordered development ; 9. Lip rounding anticipatory control: crosslinguistically lawful and ontogenetically attuned ; 10. Some organization principles in early speech development ; SECTION 4: FLUENCY DISORDERS ; 11. Speech motor variability in people who stutter ; 12. Speech motor timing and fluency ; SCTION 5: CLINICAL IMPACT ; 13. Classification and taxonomy in motor speech disorders: what are the issues? ; 14. Developmental models of childhood apraxia of speech ; 15. A neurodevelopmental framework for research in childhood apraxia of speech ; 16. Distinguishing among motor speech disorders is important: the role of speech pathology in neurologic diagnosis ; 17. Laryngeal articulatory coupling in three speech disorders ; 18. Electrical stimulation of deep brain structures and speech ; SECTION 6: METHODS ; 19. Recent advances in the physiological assessment of articulation: introducing three dimensional technology ; 20. Five-dimensional articulography ; 21. 2D and 3D ultrasound imaging of the tongue in normal and disordered speech