ABSTRACT
Speech disorders are the earliest sign of motor impairment in Parkinson′s disease (PD), even before limb dyskinesia. Patient′s quality of life can be affected significantly by the presence and severity of speech pathology. The early diagnosis is particularly necessary for PD with speech disorders. The abnormal phenomena in acoustic analysis have occurred in the early stage of PD. The voice of PD patients manifests characteristic changes on acoustic analyses, which is helpful for the diagnosis of PD, while the neural correlation of these features are not clear. In this paper, the speech features and functional imaging changes of patients with PD are described, and the mechanism of speech disorders is further revealed, and clues for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of PD are provided.