Language and Speech in Parkinson’s Disease: Studies in Functional Neuro-Imaging

Motor speech impairments are often present in movement disorders. Our aim in the current review is to present an overview of studies carried out in functional neuroimaging and assessing speech and language in Parkinson’s disease. The overall results lead us to consider the existence of “functional pathophysiologies” dependent on function: brain activation profiles imply specific compensatory recruitments that are driven either by the motoric nature itself or the activation deficits related to the pathology. The variety of methodologies used, the small number of patients studied and the non-homogenous therapeutic conditions still make it difficult to compare the listed studies.