Johnson Awarded NIH Grant for Non-Progressive Dysarthria Therapy

Michael Johnson, professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded $159,000 for research on speech impairment. The award is part of a multi-institution $447,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, led by Dr. Jeff Berry in the College of Health Sciences at Marquette University. The funding will support a study using modified auditory feedback to elicit involuntary learning in patients with non-progressive dysarthria, a type of speech impairment associated with stroke and traumatic brain injury survivors.  The goal is to improve patients’ sensorimotor control of articulatory kinematics and coordination for speech production.