Speech Disorder Called Apraxia can Progress to Neurodegenerative Disease

It may start with a simple word you can’t pronounce. Your tongue and lips stumble, and gibberish comes out.

Misspeaking might draw a chuckle from family and friends. But, then, it keeps happening. Progressively, more and more speech is lost. Some patients eventually become mute from primary progressive apraxia of speech, a disorder related to degenerative neurologic disease.

Two Mayo Clinic researchers have spent more than a decade uncovering clues to apraxia of speech. Keith Josephs, M.D., a neurologist, and Joseph R. Duffy, Ph.D., a speech pathologist, presented “My Words Come Out Wrong: When Thought and Language Are Disconnected from Speech” on Sunday, Feb. 14, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington, D.C.Source & further reading:http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/speech-disorder-called-apraxia-can-progress-to-neurodegenerative-disease/
Corina Marinescu