Dysarthria following cerebellar mutism secondary to resection of a fourth ventricle medulloblastoma: A case study

A case study is presented of an 11-year-old boy who developed severe cerebellar ataxia following resection of a fourth ventricle meduloblastoma. Dysarthria is a frequent sequela to resolution of the cerebellar mutism syndrome associated with posterior fossa surgery in children, but the speech disorder has not been well characterized by quantitative means. An acoustic analysis of the boy's speech was performed for a variety of speaking tasks, including sustained phonation, syllable repetition, sentence recitation, and conversation. His dysarthria was notable for its scanning pattern, which co-occurred with a number of other abnormalities, including explosive consonants, dysphonia, and irregular articulatory breakdowns. The dysarthria was highly similar to classic descriptions of ataxic dysarthria in adults. It is shown that the measure, pair-wise variability index, is sensitive to the scanning pattern of his dysarthria. Implications of this syndrome for understanding the role of the cerebellum in speech are discussed in terms of recent models of cerebellar function.