Inherently, the articulatory organs were not intended to produce articulatory movements, but rather to perform respiratory movements and oral intake of water and nutriments. The human erect posture taken by the vertebrae is thought to endow the articulatory organs with fine and unrestricted movements enabling speech motor control, accompanied by a unique mode of respiratory pattern in humans. However, when excessive loads or unsteadiness above the level of maintenance of the erect posture and respiration are affected by various factors, the articulatory organs engage to adjust body balance, head positioning, and respiratory function. When this occurs, the speech organs become restricted, and the degree of abnormal neural control induced by neuromuscular diseases becomes more amplified. Medical measures for dysarthria should not focus only on dysarthria, but look at and treat all aspects of dysarthria patients.

Objectives: Contrast agent (CA) aspiration is an established complication of upper gastrointestinal and videofluoroscopic swallow studies. The underlying molecular biological mechanisms of acute response to CA aspiration in the respiratory organs remain unclear. The aims of this study were to elucidate the histological and biological influences of three kinds of CA on the lung and to clarify the differences between acute and chronic responses.
Methods: Eight-week-old male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into 5 groups (n=6 per group). Three groups underwent tracheal instillation of one of three CAs: barium sulfate (Ba), ionic iodinated contrast agent (ICA), and non-ionic iodinated contrast agent (NICA). Sham and control groups were instilled with air and saline. Animals were euthanized 2 days (acute response) and 30 days (chronic response) after treatment, and histological and gene analyses were performed.
Results: No animal died after CA or sham/control aspiration. Ba caused severe prominent inflammatory cell infiltration on day 2 and remaining Ba particles caused histopathologic changes and inflammation in the lung on day 30. Iodinated ICA and NICA did not result in perceptible histologic change. Increases in expressions of inflammatory cytokines were observed in Ba aspiration rats on day 2 (Tnf, Il1b, Ifng) and day 30 (Tnf). Other inflammatory cytokines and fibrosis-related genes did not alter between groups.
Conclusion: Barium caused significantly more acute and chronic lung inflammation in a rodent model than ionic and non-ionic iodinated contrast agents. Our study highlights the importance of considering pulmonary inflammation after barium aspiration.

Objective: To verify the reproducibility of cepstrum analysis in Japanese short-sentence reading and the validity of optimum short sentences for cepstrum analysis.
Participants: Sixty healthy Japanese adult native speakers (30 males and 30 females, mean age 22.7 years, SD 4.5 years).
Voice Samples and Analysis: Voice samples were recorded four times over two days. The sustained vowel /a/ and eight short sentences in Japanese were read at a conversational pitch and volume and recorded twice each day in a random order. Voice samples were digitized using a CSL Model 4300 (Kay-PENTAX). The recorded sustained vowels and sentences were analyzed using the Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice (ADSV) program (Kay-PENTAX) for cepstral peak prominence (CPP) and Cepstral/Spectral Index of Dysphonia (CSID).
Results: For short sentences, the intraclass correlation coefficients for CPP and CSID both indicated high within-subjects reliability.
Conclusion: CPP and CSID used in cepstrum analysis showed high test-retest reliability regardless of the type of sentence, providing evidence for the utility of both items.

OBJECTIVE: More than 160 clients with articulation disorder have undergone visual feedback training using electropalatography (EPG). However, EPG data regarding typical tongue-palate contact patterns for Japanese speakers are limited. The purpose of this study was to generate EPG target patterns for the Japanese alveolar and post-alveolar consonants which were most often practised during EPG therapy.
METHODS: The participants were 15 Japanese-speaking adults without present or past speech, language, or hearing problems. EPG data were recorded for [t, d, n, s, ɕ, ts, dz, tɕ, dʑ] in vowel-consonant-vowel syllables, such as [ata]. Cumulative templates were generated from the maximum contact frame for each sound; a quantitative analysis, such as alveolar total, centre of gravity and variability index, was performed to examine the difference of each sound.
RESULTS: Although tongue-palate contact proportion varied for each person, basic configurations for each sound were similar. A cumulative template, inclusive of all participants, represented target patterns that are specific for each sound. Quantitative analysis revealed distinctive characteristics of each sound.
CONCLUSION: The cumulative templates and quantitative characteristics for each Japanese consonant provided valuable information for visual feedback training as well as EPG assessment.

Many researchers point out contributions of the various combinations of the tongue muscles for vowel production. However, internal deformation of the tongue has not been considered because of the difficulty of observation. In this research, we used the finite element method (FEM) to evaluate the transverse muscle based on tagged-cine MRI. Tagged-cine MRI can reveal internal deformation of the tongue by adding black lines in the MRI.
The results from the tagged-cine MRI during production of the vowel /ei/ (Japanese two mora) indicated that internal deformation of the tongue was clustered into four different parts (anterior-posterior axis and top-bottom axis). The anterior part moved forward while being compressed medially, and the posterior part moved forward while being expanded laterally. Notably, the anterior-top part (tongue-tip point) moved upward rather than forward. In temporal observations, the tongue-tip point moved earlier, faster and greater than the posterior-bottom (tongue-root point). These results implied contribution of the anterior part of the transverse muscle (Takano, 2006).
Movement of the tongue-tip was examined using an FEM four-cube model based on the data from the tagged-cine MRI. The motion of each point in the tongue was discussed from the perspective of the contribution of the anterior part of the transverse muscle. The results confirmed activation of the anterior part of the transverse muscle for production of /i/ by compressing medially and moving earlier, faster and greater.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the VFI translated into Japanese.
Participants: The participants were 102 adults in six ENT clinics in Japan and 56 normal volunteers. There was no difference in male-to-female ratio between the groups with and without dysphonia.
Analysis: The reliability of the VFI in the Japanese version was measured using Cronbach's alpha of internal consistency. Criterion-related validity was assessed by the extent to which the VFI in the Japanese version predicted the presence or absence of dysphonia.
Results: Cronbach's alpha of the VFI in the Japanese version was 0.919 for all participants. There were significant differences between the dysphonic and non-dysphonic groups.
Conclusion: The VFI in the Japanese version consistently showed reliability. The scores of the VFI in the Japanese version can predict the presence or absence of dysphonia.

The double deficit hypothesis (DDH) classifies children into three deficit groups: the phonological awareness deficit (PAD) group, naming speed deficit (NSD) group, and double deficit (DD) group. The DD group shows the most severe reading difficulty according to the DDH. However, there are several reports showing that the DD group did not manifest the most severe reading difficulty. Troppa et al. (2002) postulated one of the reasons for this discrepancy presented in previous reports was different writing systems. In our study, we classified Japanese-speaking children into three deficit groups based on the DDH and investigated whether the DD group manifested the most severe difficulty in reading Hiragana and Kanji, separately. The participants were 795 Japanese-speaking children from grades 1 to 6. Based on the results of a reading attainment test, we classified them, respectively, into Hiragana difficult reading and Kanji difficult reading groups. Results showed that the DD group within the Hiragana difficult reading group did not show the most severe reading difficulty, while the DD group within the Kanji difficult reading group manifested the most severe reading difficulty. This outcome suggests that the severity of the DD group may be affected by differences in writing systems.

Apraxia of speech is a disorder of speech movements at the programming level due to left hemisphere lesions in right-handed patients. However, there have been various reports of apraxia of speech due to right hemisphere lesions. Moreover, the diagnosis differential between dysprosody in apraxia of speech and foreign accent syndrome and aprosodia due to right hemisphere lesions is not clear.
The patient presented with apraxia of speech due to a lesion including the cortex/subcortex in the moderate to inferior portion of the right precentral gyrus. We assumed that apraxia of speech in this case was due to right hemisphere lesion with right hemisphere dominant lateralization of speech function. The results of several speech evaluation tasks indicated difficulty of reading aloud but with accuracy of auditory discrimination and repetition of accent pattern. From these results, we concluded that this patient was not in a state of emotional dysprosody, i.e. aprosodia. In addition, as apraxia of speech improved, the patient's symptoms changed from those of apraxia of speech to difficulty of self-correction of articulation errors and disconnection of speech sounds. These symptoms did not suggest foreign accent syndrome.
We consider that dysprosody in this case was caused by self-correction and disconnection of speech sounds in order to compensate for articulation errors due to apraxia of speech.