Analysis of Cry in New Born Infants

Abstract

2 Abstract: The acoustic analysis of infant cry is used to deduce information on the state of health of new-born babies as well as of children a few weeks old. Crying is the first tool of communication for an infant. These cries seem to be uniform, but there are a lot of differences between two cries. Infant cry characteristics reflect the development and possibly the integrity of the central nervous system. The preterm infants and infants with neurological conditions have different cry characteristics like fundamental frequency, when compared to healthy full term infant. There are differences between full term and preterm infant in their neuro-physiological maturity and its impact on their speech development. Cry characteristics of New born infant, changes with increase in age. Acoustics analysis of infant cry signals can thus give an aid to clinical diagnosis and prevention of distress since it is easy to perform, cheap and completely non-invasive. Hence, this paper aims at pre-processing to eliminate silenced region of cry signal and estimating the fundamental frequency (pitch) using time domain and frequency domain analysis. Such parameters are of interest in exploring brain function at early stages of child development, for the timely diagnosis of neonatal disease and malformation. Cry is not just an infant behavior, but rather it is a part of a behavioral system in the human species that assures survival of the helpless neonate by eliciting others to meet basic needs. The cry signal results from coordination among several brain regions that control respiration and vocal cord vibration from which the cry sounds are produced. There is a relationship between acoustic characteristics of the cry and diagnoses related to neurological damage, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, prematurity and substance exposure during pregnancy. Assessment of infant cry provides a window into the neurological and medical status of the infant. Assessment of infant cry is brief and noninvasive and requires recording equipment and a standardized stimulus to elicit a pain cry. It involves 30 seconds of crying from a single application of the stimulus. The recorded cry is submitted to an automated computer analysis system that digitizes the cry and either presents a digital spectrogram of the cry or calculates measures of cry characteristics. The most common interpretation of cry measures is based on deviations from typical cry characteristics. Infants with abnormal cries should be referred for a full neurological evaluation. Crying is a biological siren, alerting the care giving environment about the needs and wants of the infant and motivating the listener to respond. There are two key aspects of cry (1) the cry itself, which is innervated by the cranial nerves modulating the autonomic nervous system and signals emergency status, and (2) the salience of the cry to any potential caretakers in the environment, producing a visceral reaction that compels action.