Introduction: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a standard surgical treatment method which is generally applied to subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson’s patients in cases where medical treatment is insufficient in treating the motor symptoms. It is known that Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation (STN-DBS) treats many motor symptoms. However, the results of studies on speech and voice vary. The aim of the study is analysing the effect of STN-DBS on the characteristics of voice.

Materials/methods: A total of 12 patients, (8 male–4 female) with an age average of 58.8 ± 9.6, who have been applied DBS surgery on STN included in the study. The voice recordings of the patients have been done prior to surgery and 6 months after the surgery. The evaluation of voice has been carried out through the instrumental method. The patients’ voice recordings of the /a,e,i/ vowels have been done. The obtained recordings were evaluated by the Praat programme and the effects on jhitter, shimmer, fundamental frequency (F0) and noise harmonic rate (NHR) were analysed.

Results: Numerical values of F0 of all female participants have been decreased for all of the vowels postoperatively. In the females; jhitter and fraction parameters were found to be significantly different (0.056 and 0.017, perspectively) for the vowel /e/. In addition, p values in the shimmer for vowels /e,i/ were thought to be clinically significant (.087, .079 and .076) respectively. All these changes in second measurements were found to indicate worsening vocal quality after the DBS in females. In males, there is not any significant difference observed between two measures in any of the parameters of any vowels.

Conclusions: Acoustic voice quality deteriorated after STN-DBS predominantly for females however this deterioration was not prominent audio-perceptually. This finding commented as a result of the fact that that voice quality deviance of the participants was not severe.

简介：脑深部电刺激（DBS）是一种标准的手术治疗方法，通常用于帕金森病患者的丘脑底核，在药物治疗不足以治疗运动症状的情况下。众所周知，下丘脑深部脑刺激 (STN-DBS) 可治疗许多运动症状。然而，对语音和声音的研究结果各不相同。本研究的目的是分析 STN-DBS 对语音特征的影响。

材料/方法：共有 12 名患者（8 男 - 4 女），平均年龄为 58.8 ± 9.6 岁，他们已在研究中对 STN 进行 DBS 手术。患者的录音是在手术前和手术后6个月完成的。语音的评价是通过仪器法进行的。已经完成了患者对 /a,e,i/ 元音的录音。获得的录音通过 Praat 程序进行评估，并分析了对抖动、微光、基频 (F0) 和噪声谐波率 (NHR) 的影响。

结果：所有女性参与者术后所有元音的 F0 数值均有所降低。在女性中；发现元音 /e/ 的 jhitter 和分数参数显着不同（0.056 和 0.017，透视）。此外，元音 /e,i/ 微光中的p值分别被认为具有临床意义（.087、.079 和 .076）。发现第二次测量中的所有这些变化表明女性在 DBS 后声音质量恶化。在男性中，在任何元音的任何参数中，两种测量之间没有观察到任何显着差异。

结论： STN-DBS 后主要是女性的声学语音质量恶化，但这种恶化在音频感知上并不突出。这一发现的评论是因为参与者的语音质量偏差并不严重。