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Background: The utility of vocal biomarkers for mental health assessment has gained increasing attention. This study aims to further this line of research by introducing a novel vocal scoring system designed to provide mental fitness tracking insights to users in real-world settings., Methods: A prospective cohort study with 104 outpatient psychiatric participants was conducted to validate the "Mental Fitness Vocal Biomarker" (MFVB) score. The MFVB score was derived from eight vocal features, selected based on literature review. Participants' mental health symptom severity was assessed using the M3 Checklist, which serves as a transdiagnostic tool for measuring depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and bipolar symptoms., Results: The MFVB demonstrated an ability to stratify individuals by their risk of elevated mental health symptom severity. Continuous observation enhanced the MFVB's efficacy, with risk ratios improving from 1.53 (1.09-2.14, p=0.0138) for single 30-second voice samples to 2.00 (1.21-3.30, p=0.0068) for data aggregated over two weeks. A higher risk ratio of 8.50 (2.31-31.25, p=0.0013) was observed in participants who used the MFVB 5-6 times per week, underscoring the utility of frequent and continuous observation. Participant feedback confirmed the user-friendliness of the application and its perceived benefits., Conclusions: The MFVB is a promising tool for objective mental health tracking in real-world conditions, with potential to be a cost-effective, scalable, and privacy-preserving adjunct to traditional psychiatric assessments. User feedback suggests that vocal biomarkers can offer personalized insights and support clinical therapy and other beneficial activities that are associated with improved mental health risks and outcomes., Competing Interests: EL, OM, XS, and DJ receive employment income and hold equity from Sonde Health, the developer of the Mental Fitness study app. GH is Chief Medical Officer of M3 Information. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Larsen, Murton, Song, Joachim, Watts, Kapczinski, Venesky and Hurowitz.)

Purpose: Identifying efficacious measures to characterize dysphonia in complex neurodegenerative diseases is key to optimal assessment and intervention. This study evaluates the validity and sensitivity of acoustic features of phonatory disruption in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)., Method: Forty-nine individuals with ALS (40-79 years old) were audio-recorded while producing a sustained vowel and continuous speech. Perturbation/noise-based (jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio) and cepstral/spectral (cepstral peak prominence, low-high spectral ratio, and related features) acoustic measures were extracted. The criterion validity of each measure was assessed using correlations with perceptual voice ratings provided by three speech-language pathologists. Diagnostic accuracy of the acoustic features was evaluated using area-under-the-curve analysis., Results: Perturbation/noise-based and cepstral/spectral features extracted from /a/ were significantly correlated with listener ratings of roughness, breathiness, strain, and overall dysphonia. Fewer and smaller correlations between cepstral/spectral measures and perceptual ratings were observed for the continuous speech task, although post hoc analyses revealed stronger correlations in speakers with less perceptually impaired speech. Area-under-the-curve analyses revealed that multiple acoustic features, particularly from the sustained vowel task, adequately differentiated between individuals with ALS with and without perceptually dysphonic voices., Conclusions: Our findings support using both perturbation/noise-based and cepstral/spectral measures of sustained /a/ to assess phonatory quality in ALS. Results from the continuous speech task suggest that multisubsystem involvement impacts cepstral/spectral analyses in complex motor speech disorders such as ALS. Further investigation of the validity and sensitivity of cepstral/spectral measures during continuous speech in ALS is warranted.

Objective: Singers undergoing tonsillectomy are understandably concerned about possible sequelae to their voice. The surgical risks of laryngeal damage from intubation and upper airway scarring are valid reasons for singers to carefully consider their options for treatment of tonsil-related symptoms. No prior studies have statistically assessed objective voice outcomes in a group of adult singers undergoing tonsillectomy. This study determined the impact of tonsillectomy on the adult singing voice by determining if there were statistically significant changes in preoperative versus postoperative acoustic, aerodynamic, and Voice-Related Quality of Life (VRQOL) measures., Study Design: Prospective cohort study., Setting: Tertiary Referral Academic Hospital SUBJECTS: Thirty singers undergoing tonsillectomy from 2012 to 2019., Methods: Acoustic recordings were obtained with Computerized Speech Lab (CSL) (Pentax CSL 4500) and analyzed with the Multidimensional Voice Program (MDVP) (Pentax MDVP) and Pratt Acoustic Analysis Software. Estimates of aerodynamic vocal efficiency were obtained and analyzed using the Phonatory Aerodynamic System (Pentax PAS 6600). Preoperative VRQOL scores were recorded, and singers were instructed to refrain from singing for 3 weeks following tonsillectomy. Repeat acoustic and aerodynamic measures as well as VRQOL scores were obtained at the first postoperative visit., Results: Average postoperative acoustic (jitter, shimmer, HNR) and aerodynamic (sound pressure level divided by subglottal pressure) parameters related to laryngeal phonatory function did not differ significantly from preoperative measures. The only statistically significant change in postoperative measures of resonance was a decrease in the 3rd formant (F3) for the /a/ vowel. Average postoperative VRQOL scores (79.8, SD18.7) improved significantly from preoperative VRQOL scores (89, SD12.2) (P = 0.007)., Conclusions: Tonsillectomy does not appear to alter laryngeal voice production in adult singers as measured by standard acoustic and aerodynamic parameters. The observed decrease in F3 for the /a/ vowel is hypothetically related to increasing the pharyngeal cross-sectional area by removing tonsillar tissue, but this would not be expected to appreciably impact the perceptual characteristics of the vowel. Singers' self-assessment (VRQOL) improved after tonsillectomy., (Copyright © 2020 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose The goal of this study was to employ frequently used analysis methods and tasks to identify values for cepstral peak prominence (CPP) that can aid clinical voice evaluation. Experiment 1 identified CPP values to distinguish speakers with and without voice disorders. Experiment 2 was an initial attempt to estimate auditory-perceptual ratings of overall dysphonia severity using CPP values. Method CPP was computed using the Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice (ADSV) program and Praat. Experiment 1 included recordings from 295 patients with medically diagnosed voice disorders and 50 vocally healthy control speakers. Speakers produced sustained /a/ vowels and the English language Rainbow Passage. CPP cutoff values that best distinguished patient and control speakers were identified. Experiment 2 analyzed recordings from 32 English speakers with varying dysphonia severity and provided preliminary validation of the Experiment 1 cutoffs. Speakers sustained the /a/ vowel and read four sentences from the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice protocol. Trained listeners provided auditory-perceptual ratings of overall dysphonia for the recordings, which were estimated using CPP values in a linear regression model whose performance was evaluated using the coefficient of determination ( r 2 ). Results Experiment 1 identified CPP cutoff values of 11.46 dB (ADSV) and 14.45 dB (Praat) for the sustained /a/ vowels and 6.11 dB (ADSV) and 9.33 dB (Praat) for the Rainbow Passage. CPP values below those thresholds indicated the presence of a voice disorder with up to 94.5% accuracy. In Experiment 2, CPP values estimated ratings of overall dysphonia with r 2 values up to .74. Conclusions The CPP cutoff values identified in Experiment 1 provide normative reference points for clinical voice evaluation based on sustained /a/ vowels and the Rainbow Passage. Experiment 2 provides an initial predictive framework that can be used to relate CPP values to the auditory perception of overall dysphonia severity based on sustained /a/ vowels and Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice sentences.

Irregular pitch periods (IPPs) are associated with grammatically, pragmatically, and clinically significant types of nonmodal phonation, but are challenging to identify. Automatic detection of IPPs is desirable because accurately hand-identifying IPPs is time-consuming and requires training. The authors evaluated an algorithm developed for creaky voice analysis to automatically identify IPPs in recordings of American English conversational speech. To determine a perceptually relevant threshold probability, frame-by-frame creak probabilities were compared to hand labels, yielding a threshold of approximately 0.02. These results indicate a generally good agreement between hand-labeled IPPs and automatic detection, calling for future work investigating effects of linguistic and prosodic context.