Any of the speech subsystems (respiration, phonation, resonance, prosody, and articulation) can be affected, leading to impairments in intelligibility, audibility, naturalness, and efficiency of vocal communication.

These can result in dysfunction, or failure of: the motor or somatosensory cortex of the brain, corticobulbar pathways, the cerebellum, basal nuclei (consisting of the putamen, globus pallidus, caudate nucleus, substantia nigra etc.

), brainstem (from which the cranial nerves originate), or the neuromuscular junction (in diseases such as myasthenia gravis) which block the nervous system's ability to activate motor units and effect correct range and strength of movements.

[10] Growing evidence supports the likelihood of cerebellar involvement specifically affecting speech motor programming and execution pathways, producing the characteristic features associated with ataxic dysarthria.

[11] Some of the most consistent abnormalities observed in patients with ataxia dysarthria are alterations of the normal timing pattern, with prolongation of certain segments and a tendency to equalize the duration of syllables when speaking.

[1] Individuals with dysarthria may experience challenges in the following: Examples of specific observations include a continuous breathy voice, irregular breakdown of articulation, monopitch, distorted vowels, word flow without pauses, and hypernasality.

Traditional treatments target the correction of deficits in rate (of articulation), prosody (appropriate emphasis and inflection, affected e.g. by apraxia of speech, right hemisphere brain damage, etc.

[17] For Parkinson's, aim to retrain speech skills through building new generalised motor programs, and attach great importance to regular practice, through peer/partner support and self-management.

[citation needed] Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices that make coping with a dysarthria easier include speech synthesis and text-based telephones.