My very first graduate student here at CU Boulder 🦬 defended her masters thesis last week on syntax in #ataxic #dysarthria! Melanie Esver emailed me the first week I started in 2020 to do a project together. It’s bittersweet to see her finish. Congrats Melanie!!!

🚨New paper alert🚨 "Semantic focus mediates pitch auditory feedback control in phrasal prosody" Published with Jennifer Cole and Chuck Larson in Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience Published here: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… Self-archived here: osf.io/c97hd 1/7

Speaking & swallowing can become more difficult as Ataxia progresses. Dr. Higler will share strategies & exercises to help you improve your speech & swallowing. Join us from 3/30-4/1 in Las Vegas for 2023 AAC. Register here so you don't miss out: ataxia.org/2023AAC

The CO Motor Speech Lab is at the National Ataxia Foundation Annual Ataxia Conference and we met my childhood hero, Bill Nye! He shared his story about ataxia in his family. What an honor to meet him and be a part of this wonderful conference #ataxia #aac #aac23

I talked about ways to mitigate speech and swallowing impairments in ataxia at the National Ataxia Foundation Annual Ataxia Conference. Message/email me with any thoughts or questions or if you want to join our research on speech and swallowing! CO Motor Speech Lab

The Colorado Motor Speech Lab has been busy with connecting with potential research participants at the National Ataxia Foundation Annual Ataxia Conference. Sign up here if you want to find out more about participating: cuboulder.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bH…

Obligatory working outside by the quad photo with the beautiful weather we’ve had recently CU Boulder 🦬

Check out Allison I Hilger's talk on strategies to mitigate speech and swallowing impairments in #ataxia at the National Ataxia Foundation's Annual Ataxia Conference! youtube.com/watch?v=a-YBag…

New lab logo! Thank you to Melanie Esver for drawing the brain!

Representing team SLP with Allison I Hilger and @elizabethroepke 🥳

🚨New preprint🚨Task-dependent pitch auditory feedback control in cerebellar ataxia by me, Jennifer Cole, and Chuck Larson. We found that although #ataxia results in overcorrection from auditory feedback perturbations, task-dependency is intact 🧵 researchsquare.com/article/rs-318…

Consistent with other recent studies on auditory feedback perturbations in #ataxia, there are larger responses in the ataxia group to brief, unexpected pitch perturbations for sustained vowel 2/n

As a novel finding, the #ataxia group also has larger responses in phrase production. This shows that accuracy in feedback correction is impaired. However, efficiency in scaling the response by task is intact 3/n

Similar to control participants, the #ataxia group had larger pitch shift responses in phrase production vs. sustained vowel, and in sentences with corrective focus vs. new focus. Interpretation: efficiency for scaling the auditory target by task is a higher-level cortical mech

I was on a podcast! Speech Uncensored interviewed me about the Colorado Motor Speech Framework, my lab’s free motor speech assessment developed by Kylie Dunne-Platero, Caitlin Cloud, and me. Check it out! open.spotify.com/episode/65UiFI…

Check out this SCAsource article I wrote on prosody in ataxia!

My latest article in SCAsource on intelligibility in #ataxia