1st Department of Neurology, St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno

Web

www.fnusa.cz

About university

During the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University in Brno in 1919 the Clinic for Mental and Nervous Diseases was also established. Psychiatry and neurology have thus in Brno a common academic history. In the post- World War II period both workplaces became independent and the 1st Department of Neurology was established in 1948. The working team of the 1st Department of Neurology has come to be ranked among the top-level workplaces both in the Czech Republic and in Europe: The fully functional Center for Abnormal Movements and Parkinson’s Disease exists at the 1st Department of Neurology with a program of extrapyramidal disease treatment. This Center is one of the two centers in the Czech Republic for treating difficult diseases with the help of sophisticated controllable medication and deep brain stimulation used for indicated patients.

Description of cooperation

The cooperation concerns the analysis of speech and selection of optimal parameters that are used to describe the speech of patients who are afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. Hypokinetic dysarthria usually occurs in these patients, which is manifested in phonation, articulation, prosody and fluency of speech. The aim of the joint research is to analyze in this way selected significant parameters of speech in order to enable, in combination with video analysis and functional magnetic resonance imaging, designing an automatic diagnostic expert system which recognizes hypokinetic dysarthria and monitor its development before and after medication.

Publications related to cooperation

MEKYSKA, J., SMÉKAL, Z., KOŠŤÁLOVÁ, M., MRÁČKOVÁ, M., SKUTILOVÁ, S., REKTOROVÁ, I.: Motor Aspects of Speech Disorders in Parkinson’s Disease and their Evaluation. Czech and Slovak Neurology and Neurosurgery (IF 0,29), 4/2011. ISSN 1802-4041 (In Czech)