Pitch Alteration Research Articles

Vocal Outcomes Following Pitch Alteration Surgeries.

Our study aims to ascertain the results of speech therapy and surgery in patients who desire pitch alteration. Typically, patients desirous of an increase in their vocal pitch are male-to-female transpersons, and patients desirous of a drop in their pitch are puberphonia patients. This is a 3-year retrospective study of patients who have been operated for pitch alteration. This is a study of seven patients each of Wendlers glottoplasty (WG) and relaxation laryngeal framework surgery (RLFS). The records were reviewed for the preoperative and the 1-year post-operative fundamental frequency (FO), patient subjective satisfaction score (PSSS), and healing time. A total of 7/35 patients of puberphonia underwent RLFS in which the average preoperative F0 was 216Hz and 1-year post-operative F0 was 114Hz (p 0.004). The average pre- and post-operative PSSS was 4 and 9 (p 0.0004). Patients of WG had an average preoperative F0 of 153Hz and 1-year post-operative F0 of 223Hz (p 0.0005). The average pre and 1-year postoperative PSSS was 4 and 8 (p 0.002). The average healing time was 3weeks 4days in the RLFS patients and 8weeks 5days for WG patients. The results of RFLS yielded a high PSSS with a pitch drop of more than 100Hz. The results of WG yielded an increase in the pitch of 70Hz with a good PSSS. The average healing time taken following WG was double the time taken for RFLS.

Interactions between acoustic challenges and processing depth in speech perception as measured by task-evoked pupil response.

Speech perception under adverse conditions is a multistage process involving a dynamic interplay among acoustic, cognitive, and linguistic factors. Nevertheless, prior research has primarily focused on factors within this complex system in isolation. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the interaction between processing depth and the acoustic challenge of noise and its effect on processing effort during speech perception in noise. Two tasks were used to represent different depths of processing. The speech recognition task involved repeating back a sentence after auditory presentation (higher-level processing), while the tiredness judgment task entailed a subjective judgment of whether the speaker sounded tired (lower-level processing). The secondary goal of the study was to investigate whether pupil response to alteration of dynamic pitch cues stems from difficult linguistic processing of speech content in noise or a perceptual novelty effect due to the unnatural pitch contours. Task-evoked peak pupil response from two groups of younger adult participants with typical hearing was measured in two experiments. Both tasks (speech recognition and tiredness judgment) were implemented in both experiments, and stimuli were presented with background noise in Experiment 1 and without noise in Experiment 2. Increased peak pupil dilation was associated with deeper processing (i.e., the speech recognition task), particularly in the presence of background noise. Importantly, there is a non-additive interaction between noise and task, as demonstrated by the heightened peak pupil dilation to noise in the speech recognition task as compared to in the tiredness judgment task. Additionally, peak pupil dilation data suggest dynamic pitch alteration induced an increased perceptual novelty effect rather than reflecting effortful linguistic processing of the speech content in noise. These findings extend current theories of speech perception under adverse conditions by demonstrating that the level of processing effort expended by a listener is influenced by the interaction between acoustic challenges and depth of linguistic processing. The study also provides a foundation for future work to investigate the effects of this complex interaction in clinical populations who experience both hearing and cognitive challenges.

Pupillary response to dynamic pitch alteration during speech perception in noise.

Dynamic pitch, also known as intonation, conveys both semantic and pragmatic meaning in speech communication. While alteration of this cue is detrimental to speech intelligibility in noise, the mechanism involved is poorly understood. Using the psychophysiological measure of task-evoked pupillary response, this study examined the perceptual effect of altered dynamic pitch cues on speech perception in noise. The data showed that pupil dilation increased with dynamic pitch strength in a sentence recognition in noise task. Taken together with recognition accuracy data, the results suggest the involvement of perceptual arousal in speech perception with dynamic pitch alteration.

Does the Rigid External Distraction Device Alter Maxillary Pitch in Cleft Maxillary Distraction?

Statement of problemCorrection of cleft maxillary hypoplasia remains a controversial topic. Surgical correction can be accomplished through Le Fort I orthognathic correction, internal distraction osteogenesis, or external distraction osteogenesis.1 Proponents of rigid external distraction (RED) osteogenesis describe the ability of multi-vector directional distraction control as opposed to univector internal distraction. There are currently limited data on the ability of the RED system to alter the maxillary occlusal pitch.The purpose of this study is to address the following clinical question: “Among cleft patients presenting with severe maxillary hypoplasia and treated with rigid external distraction, does the rigid external distraction system result in alteration of the maxillary pitch?”The study hypothesis is: among cleft patients presenting with maxillary hypoplasia treated with RED, the investigators hypothesize that there is no change in maxillary pitch with distraction.The study's specific aims are to design a retrospective cohort study and enroll a sample composed of cleft patients with maxillary hypoplasia treated with RED: 1) identify a cohort of patients with cleft maxillary hypoplasia, 2) quantify the degree of pre-operative maxillary hyperplasia, 3) measure changes in maxillary position achieved through RED. Materials and methodsTo address the research objectives, the investigators designed a retrospective cohort study. The study sample was derived from the population of patients with cleft maxillary hypoplasia who underwent RED by the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the University of Alabama - Birmingham from June 2007 to August 2019. Subjects eligible for study inclusion had cleft maxillary hypoplasia and underwent RED. Subjects were excluded if there were incomplete data collection or their records were not available for review.Demographic and radiographic variables were recorded. Demographics included gender, age at date of surgery, and history of ULCP vs. BLCP. Radiographic variables included standard cephalometric data recorded prior to distraction (T1) and after completion of distraction (T2). Methods of data analysisDescriptive statistics were computed for all study variables. Due to the potential for both positive and negative occlusal pitch change, a paired 2-tailed T-test was used to compare T1 and T2. The level of statistical significance was set at P < .05. ResultsThe study sample was composed of 45 subjects with a mean age at surgery of 12.2+3.4 years. Twenty-two (49%) were BCLP and 27 (60.0%) were male. At T1, mean SNA was 76.35+/-6.4 degrees, and the maxillary occlusal plane to Frankfort horizontal plane was 8.18+/-6.9 degrees. The mean anterior-posterior distraction distance was 11.4+/-5.7 mm. At T2, the mean SNA was 86.0+/-7.5 degrees, and the occlusal plane to FH was 3.78+/-7.3 degrees. The average maxillary occlusal pitch change was -4.4+/-5.8 degrees (P = .005). ConclusionFor cleft lip and palate patients with maxillary hypoplasia, surgical advancement with RED results in counterclockwise rotation of the maxillary occlusal plane.

Light-driven rotation of gratings formed by electroconvection patterns in cholesteric liquid crystals

While morphological gratings made of solid structural materials have permanent periodicity, gratings induced by a periodic flow provide wide tunability utilizing the pattern formation mechanism and its dependence on the material properties. As a paradigm of such flow, here electric-field induced patterns, manifestations of electroconvection, are reported in a hybrid aligned cholesteric liquid crystal containing a chiral photosensitive dopant. The irradiation by UV light rotates the pattern via alteration of the helical pitch, where the magnitude and direction of the rotation angle depends on the UV light intensity, the concentration and type of the chiral dopant. A prototype grating capable of two-dimensional beam steering is demonstrated. Such tunability will guide chemists to search for smart molecular structures so as to control complex fluids in developing photonic devices with desired parameters.

The Effect of Pitch and Loudness Auditory Feedback Perturbations on Vocal Quality During Sustained Phonation

Dysphonia is a reduction in vocal quality that impacts communication and is often an early sign of a voice disorder. There is little information regarding the effects of auditory feedback control of loudness and pitch on voice quality. In this study, we used both loudness-shift and pitch-shift paradigms to study the relationship between auditory feedback control and vocal quality as measured by smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS), which reflects the harmonicity of the voice signal. Experimental, mixed design. We applied 200 ms loudness-shifts (± 0, 3, or 6 dB) and pitch-shifts (± 0, 50, and 100 cents) to auditory feedback during sustained vowel production in 25 healthy adults. We then measured CPPS before and after the loudness-shift or pitch-shift to investigate the effect of changes in auditory feedback on vocal harmonicity. Results showed that, on average, CPPS significantly decreased between the first half of the measured segment and the last half of the segment in the absence of auditory feedback shifts, suggesting that voice quality may be reduced across longer vowels over time. Upward and downward shifts in loudness auditory feedback caused a relative increase in CPPS, indicating an improvement in vocal harmonicity, even in cases when vocal intensity was reduced. Pitch alterations had inconsistent and minimal effects. We propose that there may be a control mechanism for voice quality that increases harmonicity of the voice signal to improve voice audibility (ie, ability to be heard) in the presence of unpredictable variability in voice intensity.

Neural Representations of the Voice Tremor Spectrum.

Voice tremor is a common movement disorder that manifests as involuntary oscillations of laryngeal muscles, leading to rhythmic alterations in voice pitch and loudness. Differential diagnosis of essential tremor of voice (ETv) is often challenging and includes dystonic tremor of voice (DTv), which is characterized by irregular, isometric contractions of laryngeal muscles during dystonic activity. Although clinical characteristics of voice tremor are well described, the pathophysiology underlying its heterogeneous phenomenology remains limited. We used a multimodal approach of functional magnetic resonance imaging for assessment of brain activity during symptomatic speech production, high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging for the examination of cortical thickness and gray matter volume, and diffusion-weighted imaging for evaluation of white matter integrity to identify disorder-specific neural alterations and their relationships with the symptomatology of ETv and DTv. We found a broad overlap between cortical alterations in ETv and DTv, involving sensorimotor regions responsible for the integration of multisensory information during speech production, such as primary sensorimotor, inferior/superior parietal, and inferior temporal cortices. In addition, ETv and DTv showed unique patterns of abnormalities in regions controlling speech motor preparation, which were localized in the cerebellum in ETv and the premotor cortex, insula, and superior temporal gyrus in DTv. Neural alterations in superior parietal and inferior temporal cortices were correlated with ETv severity, whereas changes in the left premotor cortex were associated with DTv severity. Our findings point to the pathophysiological spectrum underlying ETv and DTv and favor a more heterogeneous rather than dichotomous diagnostic classification of these voice tremor disorders. © 2020 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Educational Exposure to Transgender Patient Care in Otolaryngology Training.

Gender dysphoria is estimated to occur in over 1 million people in the United States. With decreasing stigma regarding the transgender population, it is likely more patients will seek medical and surgical gender transition as parts of their treatment. However, otolaryngologists may lack training in gender-confirming surgery. This study aims to determine the current state of transgender-related education in the United States otolaryngology training programs and to evaluate trainee perceptions regarding the importance of such training. A cross-sectional survey was performed among the United States otolaryngology training programs. A representative sample of 22 training programs divided within 4 US Census regions completed a cross-sectional 9-question survey between March and May 2017. Respondents were queried regarding demographics, transgender curricular exposure (didactic and/or clinical), and perceived importance of training in transgender patient care. A total of 285 trainees responded (69.3% response rate). Thirty percent of respondents reported education on or direct exposure to transgender care during residency. Among those with experiences in gender-confirming surgery, more than half were exposed to facial (masculinization or feminization) or pitch alteration surgery. Overall, the majority of respondents believed training in gender-confirming surgery is somewhat important and 63.2% supported incorporation of transgender patient care in existing subspecialty fellowship training. Less than one-third of otolaryngology trainees are exposed to transgender patient care. The majority of trainees endorsed the importance of residency and subspecialty fellowship training in gender-confirming surgery. To better serve the transgender population, formal didactics on gender-confirming surgery should be offered.

Human RAD51 rapidly forms intrinsically dynamic nucleoprotein filaments modulated by nucleotide binding state.

Formation of RAD51 filaments on single-stranded DNA is an essential event during homologous recombination, which is required for homology search, strand exchange and protection of replication forks. Formation of nucleoprotein filaments (NF) is required for development and genomic stability, and its failure is associated with developmental abnormalities and tumorigenesis. Here we describe the structure of the human RAD51 NFs and of its Walker box mutants using electron microscopy. Wild-type RAD51 filaments adopt an ‘open’ conformation when compared to a ‘closed’ structure formed by mutants, reflecting alterations in helical pitch. The kinetics of formation/disassembly of RAD51 filaments show rapid and high ssDNA coverage via low cooperativity binding of RAD51 units along the DNA. Subsequently, a series of isomerization or dissociation events mediated by nucleotide binding state creates intrinsically dynamic RAD51 NFs. Our findings highlight important a mechanistic divergence among recombinases from different organisms, in line with the diversity of biological mechanisms of HR initiation and quality control. These data reveal unexpected intrinsic dynamic properties of the RAD51 filament during assembly/disassembly, which may be important for the proper control of homologous recombination.

Detecting our own vocal errors: An event-related study of the thresholds for perceiving and compensating for vocal pitch errors

Previous studies suggest that a perception-action dissociation exists for the cortical processing of vocal pitch, because speakers compensate for small vocal errors without awareness. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, participants vocalized while hearing their productions either altered or unaltered in pitch, and reported whether their auditory feedback was altered. Pitch alterations as small as 10 cents resulted in compensatory vocal responses, while participants reported hearing perturbations that were 15 cents and larger. Similarly, P1 ERP responses were elicited by perturbations 15 cents and larger, while N1 responses followed a linear trend with increasing perturbation magnitudes, and P2 responses were elicited by perturbations 30 cents and larger. Although their thresholds differed, both motor and perceptual responses were elicited by small frequency altered feedback (FAF) perturbations. Previous reports of a perception-action dissociation may reflect differences in the magnitude of vocal error required to elicit a motor response, and for an individual to report a pitch change, rather than to detect a pitch change (as reflected by ERP responses).

High-density data sonification of stock market information in an immersive virtual environment

Data sonification is an important tool to enhance a user's ability to capture and process complex information. In this system, stock market data for the top 128 publicly traded stock options are analyzed for the sonification. This information includes the daily trading price and volume of each stock. Audio streams for conveying the daily information of each stock are generated using sine tone click trains, pitch alterations, and noise bursts. Each audio stream is mapped to an individual loudspeaker in the 128 loudspeaker array of Rensselaer’s Collaborative-Research Augmented Immersive Virtual Environment Laboratory (CRAIVE-Lab) to create a high-density spatialized sonification within the immersive virtual environment. [Work supported by NSF #1229391 and the Cognitive and Immersive Systems Laboratory (CISL).]

A study on judgement of intoxication using pitch alteration of speech signal in VHF environment

In this study, speech characteristics from before and after alcohol intoxication has been comparatively analyzed though speech analysis to obtain the degree of intoxication along with its parameters in VHF environment. It is studying speech characteristics of alcohol intoxicated person as pitch and formant and changing of sound levels, but it cannot analyze about before and after alcohol intoxication using these speech characteristics because it is sensitive about environmental changing so we need finding more precise parameters. Especially, speech signal is distorted from the frequency carrier characteristics in VHF environment. Thus, we study speech characteristics from before and after alcohol intoxication using pitch alteration in VHF environment.

Sensory, Cognitive, and Sensorimotor Learning Effects in Recognition Memory for Music.

Recent research suggests that perception and action are strongly interrelated and that motor experience may aid memory recognition. We investigated the role of motor experience in auditory memory recognition processes by musicians using behavioral, ERP, and neural source current density measures. Skilled pianists learned one set of novel melodies by producing them and another set by perception only. Pianists then completed an auditory memory recognition test during which the previously learned melodies were presented with or without an out-of-key pitch alteration while the EEG was recorded. Pianists indicated whether each melody was altered from or identical to one of the original melodies. Altered pitches elicited a larger N2 ERP component than original pitches, and pitches within previously produced melodies elicited a larger N2 than pitches in previously perceived melodies. Cortical motor planning regions were more strongly activated within the time frame of the N2 following altered pitches in previously produced melodies compared with previously perceived melodies, and larger N2 amplitudes were associated with greater detection accuracy following production learning than perception learning. Early sensory (N1) and later cognitive (P3a) components elicited by pitch alterations correlated with predictions of sensory echoic and schematic tonality models, respectively, but only for the perception learning condition, suggesting that production experience alters the extent to which performers rely on sensory and tonal recognition cues. These findings provide evidence for distinct time courses of sensory, schematic, and motoric influences within the same recognition task and suggest that learned auditory-motor associations influence responses to out-of-key pitches.

Light polarization states of a cholesteric liquid crystal probed with optical ellipsometry

Herein a useful methodology to study optical properties of cholesteric liquid crystals (Ch-LC) is proposed by using the Fourier decomposition ellipsometry technique to calculate the Stokes parameters of transmitted and reflected light in the UV–Vis spectral range. Combining Bragg reflection and optical activity we were able to obtain ∼100% of linear or circular light polarization from the Ch-LC sample using achromatic and non-polarized light source. The photonic bandgap and the polarization components can be controlled with the temperature as a result of alterations in the helix pitch of the cholesteric phase. Finally, it is demonstrated the correlation between the dissymmetry factor (g) calculated via the Stokes parameter S3 and the reflection spectrum. The data revealed that the maximum value of S3 is not coincident with the peak of maximum reflection. The reflected or transmitted light analysis via Stokes parameters obtained by ellipsometry showed an alternative and low cost method for optical characterization in Ch-LC.

Evaluation of the Effect of Tube Pitch and Surface Alterations on Temperature Field at Sprinkled Tube Bundle

Water flowing on a sprinkled tube bundle forms three basic modes: It is the Droplet mode (liquid drips from one tube to another), the Jet mode (with an increasing flow rate droplets merge into a column) and the Membrane (Sheet) mode (with further increasing of falling film liquid flow rate columns merge and create sheets between the tubes. With sufficient flow rate sheets merge at this state and the tube bundle is completely covered by a thin liquid film). There are several factors influencing the individual mode types as well as heat transfer. Beside the above mentioned falling film liquid flow rate they are for instance tube diameters, tube pitches in a tube bundle or a physical condition of a falling film liquid. This paper presents a summary of data measured at atmospheric pressure at a tube bundle consisting of copper tubes of 12 milimeters diameter and of the studied tube length one meter. The tubes are positioned horizontally one above another with the tested pitches of 15, 20, 25 and 30 mm and there is a distribution tube placed above them with water flowing out. The thermal gradient of 15–40 has been tested with all pitches where the falling film liquid’s temperature at the inlet of the distribution tube was 15 °C. The liquid was heated during the flow through the exchanger and the temperature of the sprinkled (heater) liquid at the inlet of the exchanger with a constant flow rate about 7.2 litres per minute was 40 °C. The tested flow of the falling film liquid ranged from 1.0 to 13.0 litres per minute. Sequences of 180 exposures have been recorded in partial flow rate stages by thermographic camera with record frequency of 30 Hz which were consequently assessed using the Matlab programme. This paper presents results achieved at the above mentioned pitches and at three types of tube bundle surfaces.

Sensorimotor Learning Enhances Expectations During Auditory Perception

Sounds that have been produced with one's own motor system tend to be remembered better than sounds that have only been perceived, suggesting a role of motor information in memory for auditory stimuli. To address potential contributions of the motor network to the recognition of previously produced sounds, we used event-related potential, electric current density, and behavioral measures to investigate memory for produced and perceived melodies. Musicians performed or listened to novel melodies, and then heard the melodies either in their original version or with single pitch alterations. Production learning enhanced subsequent recognition accuracy and increased amplitudes of N200, P300, and N400 responses to pitch alterations. Premotor and supplementary motor regions showed greater current density during the initial detection of alterations in previously produced melodies than in previously perceived melodies, associated with the N200. Primary motor cortex was more strongly engaged by alterations in previously produced melodies within the P300 and N400 timeframes. Motor memory traces may therefore interface with auditory pitch percepts in premotor regions as early as 200 ms following perceived pitch onsets. Outcomes suggest that auditory-motor interactions contribute to memory benefits conferred by production experience, and support a role of motor prediction mechanisms in the production effect.

Atypical Prosody in Asperger Syndrome: Perceptual and Acoustic Measurements

It is known that individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) may show no problems with regard to what is said (e.g., lexical content) but tend to have difficulties in how utterances are produced, i.e., they may show prosodic impairments. In the present study, we focus on the use of prosodic features to express grammatical meaning. Specifically, we explored the sentence type difference between statements and questions that is conveyed by intonation, using perceptual and acoustic measurements. Children aged 8 and 9 years with AS (n = 12) were matched according to age and nonverbal intelligence with typically developing peers (n = 17). Although children with AS could produce categorically accurate prosodic patterns, their prosodic contours were perceived as odd by adult listeners, and acoustic measurements showed alterations in duration and pitch. Additionally, children with AS had greater variability in fundamental frequency contours compared to typically developing peers.

The 5% difference: early sensory processing predicts sarcasm perception in schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder

Intact sarcasm perception is a crucial component of social cognition and mentalizing (the ability to understand the mental state of oneself and others). In sarcasm, tone of voice is used to negate the literal meaning of an utterance. In particular, changes in pitch are used to distinguish between sincere and sarcastic utterances. Schizophrenia patients show well-replicated deficits in auditory function and functional connectivity (FC) within and between auditory cortical regions. In this study we investigated the contributions of auditory deficits to sarcasm perception in schizophrenia. Auditory measures including pitch processing, auditory emotion recognition (AER) and sarcasm detection were obtained from 76 patients with schizophrenia/schizo-affective disorder and 72 controls. Resting-state FC (rsFC) was obtained from a subsample and was analyzed using seeds placed in both auditory cortex and meta-analysis-defined core-mentalizing regions relative to auditory performance. Patients showed large effect-size deficits across auditory measures. Sarcasm deficits correlated significantly with general functioning and impaired pitch processing both across groups and within the patient group alone. Patients also showed reduced sensitivity to alterations in mean pitch and variability. For patients, sarcasm discrimination correlated exclusively with the level of rsFC within primary auditory regions whereas for controls, correlations were observed exclusively within core-mentalizing regions (the right posterior superior temporal gyrus, anterior superior temporal sulcus and insula, and left posterior medial temporal gyrus). These findings confirm the contribution of auditory deficits to theory of mind (ToM) impairments in schizophrenia, and demonstrate that FC within auditory, but not core-mentalizing, regions is rate limiting with respect to sarcasm detection in schizophrenia.

A new generation of time variant electro-acoustic enhancement systems

In 1991, Dr. David Griesinger presented a paper at the 90th AES convention [preprint 3014] describing a new method for improved electronic acoustic enhancement, and hundreds of these systems have been installed throughout the world. This paper describes a new approach to both hardware and software that comprises a third generation system. The new system retains the essential features of multichannel time variance with low pitch alteration, but updates the algorithms to utilize the superior DSP power of modern computers. Multiple reverberators, equalization, and matrix distribution can be combined into a single, reliable, and easily replaceable piece of hardware. Overall system gain and equalization can be calibrated automatically anytime; parameters in the hall have changed. The new algorithm combines the efficiency of infinite impulse response filters with direct convolution to produce a time-variant structure with extremely low coloration. The algorithm also includes a novel 32 band antifeedback circuit...

Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Structural Alterations in Coal Tar Pitch Subjected to Heat Treatment

Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Structural Alterations in Coal Tar Pitch Subjected to Heat Treatment