Speech production

Much of the study of oral language deficits in aging and dementia has been restricted to lexical and semantic impairments. However, oral production of language relies not only on higher-order cognitive capacities, such as executive functions or memory, but also on very fine and elaborated movements as well as their interplay with respiration. We investigate speech production in cognitively healthy older adults as well as in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) / early dementia to apprise the underlying mechanisms related to declines in speech through two independent lines of study that are presented in the following projects.