vCard

Prof. Nick Miller
Prof of Motor Speech Disorders

  • Email: nicholas.miller@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0)191 222 5603
  • Fax: +44 (0)191 222 6518
  • Address: Institute of Health and Society
    Room 1.11 Speech language sciences
    George VI Building
    University of Newcastle upon Tyne
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU

Research Interests

Motor control (in particular, motor speech disorders and apraxia)
Psychosocial impact of (communication) disability in neurological illness
Bilingualism (in particular, neurolinguistic aspects)

Current Work

My main areas of research come under the general label of acquired neurogenic speech disorders, centred on improving our understanding of these disorders, how to accurately assess them and developing (re)habilitation techniques and programmes to support people who have motor speech disorders. That is, I am interested in the changes to voice, speech and swallowing that arise as a result of neurological illness and the effects these changes have on the life of the person who has a neurological condition and the effects on their family and social life. I am interested in how to accurately describe changes and what methods there are to ameliorate and overcome the effects of living with a motor speech disorder.

Broadly speaking my work takes three perspectives: 1) a theoretical perspective looking at what data from the ways in which speech control changes in neurological conditions can tell us about how the brain plans and executes speech motor control and how this relates to language and movement control and in turn informs ideas for treatmnent; 2) an applied perspective, seeking ways in which theoretical constructs and advances and results from the first perspective can be gainfully applied to clinical assessment and rehabilitation issues; 3) a social psychological perspective looking at how voice and speech changes impact on the self concept and social life of the person with a motor speech disorder.

Areas in which I have focused on this work include:

Communication changes in Parkinson's Disease.
A main strand of my work involves a focus on communication changes in Parkinson's disease. I have led collaborations over several years with neurology, health service research, physiotherapy and speech scientists colleagues in Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, in GB, and in the university of Tuebingen, Germany. We began by investigating the prevalence, nature and psychosocial impact of speech, voice and swallowing changes in Parkinson's disease, with a special emphasis on the perspective of the speaker. The results have allowed us to progress to looking at issues of differential diagnosis and rehabilitation.

Regarding differential diagnosis we have examined speech voice and language changes in Parkinson's disease compared with progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy with prominent parkinsonism.

We have recemtly completedthe first detailed national survey of the views of people with Parkinson's and speech language therapists who support them on the nature of communication changes and what is/is not done or could be done regarding rehabilitation. Together with the results from our nature and psychosocial impact work, this will form the basis of large scale evaluations of different therapy interventions.

We have also conducted or have in progress studies examining:
-Effects of medication and surgery on speech and voice
-Longitudinal change in speech, voice and swallowing and the relationship of speech and swallowing changes to motor and other cognitive changes.

Our research team has input to a project in Tanzania, examining speech, voice and swallowing changes in unmedicated people with Parkinson's disease and in developing Swahili language assessments for diagnosis and monitoring of change in Parkinson's disease.

Financial Support:
Our research on these projects has been generously supported by the Parkinson's Disease Society (UK), British Academy, Association of Commonwealth Universities, Rhoda Lockhart Trust and Grace Patching Trust.

Apraxia of speech
Another strand of research concerns the nature of apraxia of speech, addressing issues of theory (e.g. what is apraxia precisely? what has broken down? what models of speech output best account for clinical findings?) and clinical issues (how does one recognise apraxia of speech, how does one assess it, what should the targets of treatment be?).

Within this context we recently completed a project investigating the effects of phonological neighbourhood density (how many neighbours a word has by changing just one sound – cat has many neighbours - cot, kit, catch etc; elf has few) and phonotactic predictability (the frequency of different sound sequences in a language; e.g. in English the sequence sp- is frequent but sf- infrequent) in acquired speech output disturbances.

Other current work in the area of apraxia of speech involves cooperation with colleagues in Aachen, Germany, using neural net modelling of speech motor control to create virtaul 'patients' in order to gain insights into underlying impairments in apraxia of speech.

Foreign Accent syndrome
Related to the work in apraxia of speech I have an interest in foreign accent syndrome which I have pursued with colleagues in Glasgow and Oxford. We have been looking at what is the nature of the underlying cause, what makes foreign accent foreign, and how does this impact on the individual speaker.
Our research in this field has been supported by Newcastle Hospitals Trust and the British Academy.

Cerebral palsy
I am also a collaborator with my colleague Dr Lindsay Pennington in Child Health in Newcastle, on a series of studies funded by Cerebra UK, Children's Foundation and Remedi, looking at intensive speech therapy for teenagers and younger people with cerebral palsy. Together with our colleague Eftychia Eftychiou, University of Cambridge, we are also conducting more detailed analyses of the relationship between perceptual and acoustic measures of speech and voice change in cerebral palsy.

Bilingual and cross language studies
I have a longstanding interest in how the brain manages with two or more languages, and more specifically what happens to the different languages in neurological illness. I have also used cross language studies of language and speech breakdown to address issues in the organisation and control of language and speech in the brain, again with an emphasis on using outcomes to inform clinical assessment and treatment questions. Current and recently completed studies in this field cover projects with colleagues in the Netherlands and Germany looking at naming in bilingual speakers with Alzheimer's dementia; voice fundamental frequency differences across a bilingual speaker's different languages; a comparison of speech apraxic errors in German and English.

Selected Publications

More Publications

Projects

Research Roles

I am a member of several professional bodies and societies, including:
Royal College Speech and Language Therapists (London)
Registered member Health Professions Council (GB)
Fellow Royal Society of Medicine
Academy of Acquired Neurologic Communication Disorders and Sciences (USA)
British Neuropsychological Society
British Aphasiology Society
Founder member International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association

I hold several journal editorial posts:
-I was cofounder and joint editor in chief of International J. Bilingualism and Cross-Linguistic Studies (1996-2007, ordinary board member 2007-)
-Executive Editorial Board, International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders (formerly European Journal of Disorders of Communication) (1994 - to date)
-Reviews Editor, International Journal of Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics (1986 - 2000)(ordinary board member 2000 - 2007)
-Editorial board, International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation (2003-to date)
-Editorial Board, Revue Parole (Belgium) (1997 - to date)
-Editorial Board, Revista de Logopedia, Foniatria y Audiologia (Spain) (1999 - to date)

Postgraduate Supervision

I would be pleased to supervise PhD or MPhil work in any of my areas of interest.

Currently I am supervising work in vocal tremor in Parkinson's disease, prosody in Parkinson's disease, influences on speech output in apraxia of speech, speech therapy in cerebral palsy and treatment outcomes in stuttering therapy

Undergraduate Teaching

Main teaching areas: Undergraduate

Acquired motor speech disorders
Memory and cognition/ clinical neuropsychology
Research methods and statistics
Clinical training
BSc dissertation supervision

Postgraduate Teaching

Teaching Postgraduate:
Research methods
Motor speech disorders
Memory and cognition
Clinical case studies
Supervision of MSc, MPhil and PhD dissertations