Every time we speak, our brains have to meticulously coordinate the movements of some 100 muscles in the face, mouth, tongue, lips, and vocal cords. Those muscles then have to fire almost instantaneously to produce the right sounds.
Speech is complicated, to say the least — if something goes wrong at any point between the first neural signals and the last muscular contractions, it may result in difficulty speaking, or a disorder known as dysarthria.
“When you have an interruption in that pathway, you have dysarthria,” says Brooke Hatfield, associate director of medical health services at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Dysarthria Can Impede Speech
Given the myriad brain regions and muscles involved (basically all of them from the lungs on up), those interruptions can come in many forms. Dysarthria isn’t narrowly defined; it’s an umbrella term for any loss of muscular control that impedes speech.
