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Speakers typically modify their voice in the presence of increased background noise levels, exhibiting the classic Lombard effect. Lombard-related characteristics during everyday activities were recorded from 17 vocally healthy women who wore an acoustic noise dosimeter and ambulatory voice monitor. The linear relationship between vocal sound pressure level and environmental noise level exhibited an average slope of 0.54 dB/dB and value of 72.8 dB SPL at 50 dBA when correlation coefficients were greater than 0.4. These results, coupled with analyses of spectral and cepstral vocal function measures, provide normative ambulatory Lombard characteristics for comparison with patients with voice-use related disorders.

This study introduces the in vivo application of a Bayesian framework to estimate subglottal pressure, laryngeal muscle activation, and vocal fold contact pressure from calibrated transnasal high-speed videoendoscopy and oral airflow data. A subject-specific, lumped-element vocal fold model is estimated using an extended Kalman filter and two observation models involving glottal area and glottal airflow. Model-based inferences using data from a vocally healthy male individual are compared with empirical estimates of subglottal pressure and reference values for muscle activation and contact pressure in the literature, thus providing baseline error metrics for future clinical investigations.

International audience; Following a production-based approach, this paper deals with the acoustic behavior of humpback whales. This approach investigates various physical factors, which are either internal (e.g., physiological mechanisms) or external (e.g., environmental constraints) to the respiratory tractus of the whale, for their implications in sound production. This paper aims to describe a functional scenario of this tractus for the generation of vocal sounds. To do so, a division of this tractus into three different configurations is proposed, based on the air recirculation process which determines air sources and laryngeal valves. Then, assuming a vocal function (in sound generation or modification) for several specific anatomical components, an acoustic characterization of each of these configurations is proposed to link different spectral features, namely, fundamental frequencies and formant structures, to specific vocal production mechanisms. A discussion around the question of whether the whale is able to fully exploit the acoustic potential of its respiratory tractus is eventually provided.

Voice quality changes with age. In many cases, these voice changes result in a lower quality of life. Because one way of identifying these voice quality changes is through perceptually estimating talker age, correlations made between estimated talker age and acoustic analysis can provide insight to the possible physiological degeneration related to vocal function. While most perceptual studies investigating estimated talker age are cross-sectional, a longitudinal study of single speakers could provide additional details in the progressive degeneration of the voice quality. Nevertheless, one limitation of these studies is that perceptual ratings of voice quality or talker age in a longitudinal study could be biased by recording quality. Further, the spectral qualities of recordings from earlier decades are limited by the technology used. In this paper, a spectral-normalization filter was developed and applied to a corpus of recordings from an individual spanning about 50 years (1959 - 2007) to reduce this impact of these limitations. The filter was shown to be effective in normalizing the autospectra of the recordings and the fundamental frequency was unaffected by the filter. Preliminary subjective analysis suggests that the recording quality of all the files were perceptually similar.

Many common voice disorders are chronic or recurring conditions that are likely to result from inefficient and/or abusive patterns of vocal behavior, referred to as vocal hyperfunction. The clinical management of hyperfunctional disorders would be greatly enhanced by the ability to monitor and quantify detrimental vocal behaviors during an individual’s activities of daily life. This presentation will provide an update about ongoing work that is using a miniature accelerometer on the subglottal neck surface to collect a large set of ambulatory data on patients with hyperfunctional voice disorders (before and after treatment) and matched control subjects. Three types of analysis approaches are being employed in an effort to identify the best set of measures for differentiating among hyperfunctional and normal patterns of vocal behavior: (1) previously developed ambulatory measures of vocal function that include vocal dosages; (2) measures based on estimates of glottal airflow that are extracted from the acc...

The study reports the effect of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) on vocal function in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Specifically, the effect was evaluated in relation to the vibratory characteristics of the vocal folds during sustained vowel phonation using two different methods: one measures jitter and shimmer, while the other measures the correlation dimension D2, a nonlinear dynamic analysis. Twenty right‐handed individuals with advanced PD and dysarthria underwent unilateral STN DBS. Ten were operated on the right hemisphere and ten on the left hemisphere. The side receiving STN DBS had more affected motor function. Speech was evaluated before surgery and three‐to‐six months after surgery with stimulator‐off and with stimulator‐on; all were off anti‐Parkinsonian medication for 12 h before evaluation. Evaluators and subjects were blinded to the subjects stimulator status at the postsurgery evaluations. Nonspeech motor performance was assessed with UPDRS‐III. Each subject produced six maximally ...

Several studies have found that high background noise levels are detrimental to health parameters. In particular, this seems to apply to developing voices were future vocal habits are established. Thus, it is important to study vocal function and environmental effects on the developing child voice. This study analyzed the effects of background noise on children’s voices, specifically vocal intensity, and fundamental frequency. The investigated vocal parameters were (1) the relationship of background noise levels to F0 and vocal intensity, (2) F0 and vocal intensity variations over the day, and (3) F0 perturbation variations over the day. Ten 5‐year‐old children from three day‐cares participated, six boys and four girls. The audio signal was recorded by two microphones mounted in front of the subjects’ ears. By adding these signals it is possible to separate the voice from background noise. The material analyzed contained data from three 60‐min recordings per child from morning, noon, and afternoon during a normal day at the day‐care. Generally high mean background noise levels were found (82.6 dBA). Preliminary results suggest a correlation between high background noise and high F0 and vocal intensity in the children’s voices, particularly for boys. F0 perturbation tends to increase during the day.

Dysphonia associated with laryngeal paralysis may be identified in the short term postoperatively or may develop years after successful arytenoid adduction. In selected cases, collagen injection of vocal fold improves phonation after arytenoid adduction. Our experience with the use of collagen injection to supplement arytenoid adduction is reported. Forty patients were treated with transoral collagen injection into the atrophic vocal fold after arytenoid adduction at The University of Tokyo from January 1990 to December 2005. These patients all had a diagnosis of unilateral vocal fold paralysis. Voice quality (GRBAS scale) and the other examinations for vocal function demonstrated measurable improvement after treatment. After arytenoid adduction, maximum phonation time (MPT) improved from 5 to 11 s and mean flow rate (MFR) as an aerodynamic examination improved from 772 to 322 ml/s. Voice quality, especially roughness, improved from 1.8 to 0.8 after collagen injection. MPT (from 11 to 14 s) and MFR (from 322 to 233 ml/s) showed overall improvement after collagen injection. We will report the ease with which transoral collagen injection was accomplished and how better voice quality was attained without the more extensive surgery. In the session techniques of anesthesia, injection, and patient selection are discussed.

The waveform of the volume velocity of the airflow through the larynx, as obtained by inverse filtering the volume velocity of the airflow exiting the mouth and nose, is a potential convenient noninvasive measure of the vibratory pattern of the vocal folds during voiced speech. Of special interest is a measure that is sufficiently robust for clinical use in the detection, monitoring, and treatment of voice disorders. The problems in this application are of three types: (1) The parameters of the inverse filter must be set to match the acoustic transfer function of the vocal tract; (2) glottal airflow is, in some way, not an accurate indicator of vocal fold motion; and (3) the analysis must be accurate under a wide range of normal and disordered voice qualities and possible nasal coupling. Because of these problems, it has been difficult to find a robust and accurate automatic procedure, even if the analysis is restricted to only the simplest case of open vowels. However, there appears to be a rather straig...

The degree of closeness of the arytenoid cartilages (laryngeal adduction) plays an important role in vocal function and quality. In this paper, adduction for steady vowels was varied between voiced qualities of breathy (greater abduction) to normal to constricted (greater adduction). The superior view of the larynx of various subjects was videotaped and dimensions of laryngeal adduction were measured. The measurements were compared with values of the abduction quotient [1. R. Titze, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 75, 570–580 (1984)] obtained from simultaneous recordings of the electroglottograph signal and with a measure of electroglottograph waveform width. The width measure strongly correlates with the abduction quotient. Results suggest that the adduction measures may be useful for clinical and research purposes. [Work supported by NIH.]