USU speech researcher receives NIH grant to study Parkinson's communication
The two-year award gives Stephanie Borrie three concurrent NIH grants totaling more than $5.4 million, the university said.
LOGAN - A Utah State University speech researcher has received a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to test a new approach to helping people with Parkinson's disease hold conversations, according to a Nov. 12 Utah State Today release.
Stephanie Borrie, a professor of speech and hearing sciences and interim associate dean for research in USU's Emma Eccles Jones College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, received the R21 award from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. USU said it brings her active NIH funding to three concurrent grants totaling more than $5.4 million.
The project will study whether coaching conversation partners to talk more slowly and clearly leads people with Parkinson's to pick up those habits on their own, building on the tendency of speakers to match each other. Collaborators at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Texas at El Paso are part of the work, the release said.
"What matters to me is whether our research actually makes a difference in people's lives," said Borrie, who directs USU's Human Interaction Lab.