Breathy Voice Research Articles

Endoscopic Posterior Rotation Flap for Posterior Glottic Insufficiency.

Endoscopic Posterior Rotation Flap for Posterior Glottic Insufficiency.

Emotional Speech Processing in 3- to 12-Month-Old Infants: Influences of Emotion Categories and Acoustic Parameters.

The aim of this study was to investigate infants' listening preference for emotional prosodies in spoken words and identify their acoustic correlates. Forty-six 3- to-12-month-old infants (M age = 7.6 months) completed a central fixation (or look-to-listen) paradigm in which four emotional prosodies (happy, sad, angry, and neutral) were presented. Infants' looking time to the string of words was recorded as a proxy of their listening attention. Five acoustic variables-mean fundamental frequency (F0), word duration, intensity variation, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), and spectral centroid-were also analyzed to account for infants' attentiveness to each emotion. Infants generally preferred affective over neutral prosody, with more listening attention to the happy and sad voices. Happy sounds with breathy voice quality (low HNR) and less brightness (low spectral centroid) maintained infants' attention more. Sad speech with shorter word duration (i.e., faster speech rate), less breathiness, and more brightness gained infants' attention more than happy speech did. Infants listened less to angry than to happy and sad prosodies, and none of the acoustic variables were associated with infants' listening interests in angry voices. Neutral words with a lower F0 attracted infants' attention more than those with a higher F0. Neither age nor sex effects were observed. This study provides evidence for infants' sensitivity to the prosodic patterns for the basic emotion categories in spoken words and how the acoustic properties of emotional speech may guide their attention. The results point to the need to study the interplay between early socioaffective and language development.

The orofacial, oromotor, speech, and voice characteristics of adolescents in youth detention: a comparison of groups with and without prenatal alcohol exposure

ABSTRACT Purpose Language disorder is highly prevalent in youth justice; however, orofacial, oromotor, speech, and voice anomalies have been largely overlooked. There has been some documentation of these among individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), and adolescents with PAE are over-represented in youth justice. The aims of this exploratory study were to (1) identify the prevalence of orofacial, oromotor, speech, and voice anomalies among adolescents in youth detention and (2) examine how these compare between adolescents with and without PAE. Materials and Methods In a youth detention centre, in which both non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal young peoples were detained, a speech-language pathologist conducted non-standardized orofacial and oromotor examinations with 95 adolescents, (47% with PAE). Observed speech and voice anomalies were also recorded. We analysed data according to PAE. Results Features consistent with malocclusions, and anomalies with oromotor function, speech, and voice were observed among the adolescents. There was no statistical difference between the PAE and no-PAE groups for any measure. However, stuttering, monotone voice, breathy voice, and irregular uvula were only observed in the PAE group, and frontal lisp, tongue incoordination, and weak upper facial muscles were only observed among the no-PAE group. Conclusions We identified high prevalence of orofacial, oromotor, speech, and voice anomalies among adolescents in youth detention. We discuss our findings in relation to our use of non-standardized assessment methods, assessment with Aboriginal young peoples, youth detention populations broadly being high-risk for health and developmental conditions, and the implications of the anomalies for the adolescents. Our findings are important for informing services in youth justice, and strengthen the argument that speech-language pathology services are essential in youth detention.

Auditory Perception of Roughness and Breathiness by Dysphonic Women

To investigate the auditory perception of roughness and breathiness by dysphonic women. Twenty-two dysphonic native Brazilian Portuguese women participated in this research. All participants underwent audiological evaluation and laryngeal examination to confirm the diagnosis. During the tests, they recorded the sustained vowel /Ɛ/. A speech-language pathologist performed the auditory-perceptual judgment of voice quality for these vocal samples, categorizing the general degree of vocal deviation (mild, moderate, and severe degree) and the predominant type of deviation (roughness or breathiness). Thirty-two (32) stimuli were selected from a voice database, including twenty-four (24) dysphonic voice samples and eight (8) voice samples from vocally healthy women. The authors conducted five perception experiments, being three categorization tasks (normal vs. deviated, breathy vs. nonbreathy, rough vs. nonrough) and two tasks for discriminating the degree of deviation (roughness degree and breathiness degree). The experiments showed a difference between the answers for presence/absence of deviation, presence/absence of breathiness, and presence/absence of roughness in the stimuli, and a difference in the proportion of similar answers of dysphonic women (P < 0.001) regarding the identification of the deviation. Participants classified a large part of the deviated (57.9%), breathy (63.13%), and rough (65.31%) voices as normal. The degree of vocal deviation (P = 0.008) and the degree of roughness in the stimuli correlated positively with the proportion of similar answers of the participants. As for the discrimination of breathiness degrees, less deviated (normal and mild) voices were less discriminated, and more deviated (moderate and severe) voices were better discriminated. Regarding the discrimination of roughness degrees, only the voices with severe deviations showed good discrimination. Dysphonic women had a high rate of not similar answers in the identification of normal and deviated voices. They identified more than half of the deviated voices as normal. Samples with more severe deviations were proportionally more identified as deviated by the participants. The greater the vocal deviation of the participants' voices, the smallest the number of similar answers. Participants had a high rate of not similar answers in the identification of normal and breathy voices. Dysphonic women show less ability to perceive mildly and moderately breathy voices in the breathy category. Participants had a high rate of similar answers in the identification of normal and rough voices. Dysphonic women show less ability to perceive mildly and moderately breathy voices in the breathy category. Participants show less ability to perceive only mildly roughness voices with similar responses. Dysphonic women could discriminate between voices with adjacent degrees of roughness but had a low percentage of similar answers for discrimination between voices with adjacent degrees of breathiness.

Classification of Parkinson Disease Based on Patient’s Voice Signal Using Machine Learning

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a nervous system disorder first described as a neurological condition in 1817. It is one of the more prevalent diseases in the elderly, and Alzheimer’s is the second most common neurodegenerative illness. It impacts the patient’s movement. Symptoms start gradually with tremors, stiffness in movement, and speech and voice disorders. Researches proved that 89% of patients with Parkinson’s has speech disorder including uncertain articulation, hoarse and breathy voice and monotone pitch. The cause behind this voice change is the reduction of dopamine due to damage of neurons in the substantia nigra responsible for dopamine production. In this work, Parkinson’s disease is classified with the help of human voice signals. Six different machine learning (ML) algorithms are used in the classification: Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) Classifier, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB) Classifier, Logistic Regression Classifier, Random Forest Classifier, K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) Classifier, and Decision Tree (DT) Classifier. This research aims to classify Parkinson’s disease using human voice signals and extract essential features to reduce the complexity of the dataset. Then, human voice signals are analyzed to check the voice intensity and spectrum for PD patients. Then, machine learning classifiers are applied to classify the PD patients based on the extracted features. The results show that SGD-Classifier has 91% accuracy, XGB-Classifier has 95% accuracy, Logistic Regression has 91% accuracy, Random Forest shows 97% accuracy, KNN shows 95% accuracy, and Decision Tree has 95% accuracy. Hence, Random Forest has the highest accuracy. The disease can be studied more by looking for more characteristics of PD patients to enhance its proper use in the medical field.

The Effects of Remote Signal Transmission and Recording on Acoustical Measures of Simulated Essential Vocal Tremor: Considerations for Remote Treatment Research and Telepractice

PurposeStudies on medical and behavioral interventions for essential vocal tremor (EVT) have shown inconsistent effects on acoustical and perceptual outcome measures across studies and across participants. Remote acoustical and perceptual assessments might facilitate studies with larger samples of participants and repeated measures that could clarify treatment effects and identify optimal treatment candidates. Furthermore, remote acoustical and perceptual assessment might allow clinicians to monitor clients’ treatment responses and optimize treatment approaches during telepractice. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of remote signal transmission and recording for acoustical and perceptual assessment of EVT. MethodSimulations of EVT were produced using a computational model and were recorded using local and remote procedures to represent client- and clinician-end recordings respectively. Acoustical analyses measured the extent and rate of fundamental frequency (fo) and intensity modulation to represent vocal tremor severity and the cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) to represent voice quality. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with recording as the within-subjects factor and sex of the computational model as the between-subjects factor. ResultsThere was a significant main effect of recording on the rate of fo modulation and significant interactions of recording and sex for the extent of intensity modulation, rate of intensity modulation, and CPPS. Posthoc pairwise comparisons and analysis of effect size indicated that recording procedures had the largest effect on the extent of intensity modulation for male simulations, the rate of intensity modulation for male and female simulations, and the CPPS for male and female simulations. Despite having disabled all known software and computer audio enhancing options and having stable ethernet connections, there was inconsistent attenuation of signal amplitude in remote recordings that was most problematic for samples with a breathy voice quality but also affected samples with typical and pressed voice qualities. ConclusionsAcoustical measures that correlate to perception of vocal tremor and voice quality were altered by remote signal transmission and recording. In particular, signal transmission and recording in Zoom altered time-based estimates of intensity modulation and CPPS with male and female simulations of EVT and magnitude-based estimates of intensity modulation with male simulations of EVT. In contrast, signal transmission and recording in Zoom minimally altered time- and magnitude-based estimates of fo modulation with male and female simulations of EVT. Therefore, acoustical and perceptual assessments of EVT should be performed using audio recordings that are collected locally on the participant- or client-end, particularly when measuring modulation of intensity and CPP or estimating vocal tremor severity and voice quality. Development of procedures for collecting local audio recordings in remote settings may expand data collection for treatment research and enhance telepractice.

Combined autologous fascia transplantation with autologous fascia and fat injection into the vocal fold for sulcus vocalis

Objective: To assess voice outcomes after surgical technique for typeⅡ and type Ⅲ sulcus vocalis. Methods: The data of 39 cases of bilateral type Ⅱ-Ⅲ sulcus vocalis were collected and analyzed retrospectively. There were 29 patients with bilateral type Ⅲ sulcus vocalis, and 10 patients with type Ⅲ on one side and typeⅡon the contralateral vocal cord. All of vocal cords were applied autologous anterior rectus sheath fascia transplant, and 68 sides of vocal cords with type Ⅲ sulcus vocalis were also applied autologous fascia and fat injection. Two male patients, whose results from transplant and injection were not satisfied, were carried out cricothyroid myotomy one year after surgery. Subjective and objective voice evaluations were performed before and after operation. Results: One patient was found mild adhesion on the middle part of vocal cords, and all the other 38 patients recovered well and there were no complications. During 5-6 weeks after surgery, breathy voice was the feather. Then vocal quality and glottal closure were gradually improved and became steady in 12 months. It showed that all the subjective and objective parameters, except for fundamental frequency, were significantly improved (P<0.05), and obvious improvement was achieved in glottal closures and mucosal waves in 35 patients. Three patients obtained no significant vocal quality improvement after transplant and injection surgery, and two male patients of them achieved improvement in mucosal waves and MPT after bilateral cricothyroid muscle amputations. One patient, who was revealed with mild adhesion, achieved a satisfied result after adhesion separation and suture. All the patients who originally had feelings of fatigue and voice discontinuity during phonation gained significant improvement postoperatively. Steady function with no complications was observed during the 36 months (up to 5 years in 20 patients) follow-up period. Conclusions: Autologous fascia transplantation combined fascia and fat injcetion can lead to excellent long-term results, and it is a good treatment option for pathologic sulcus vocalis. Cricothyroid muscle amputations can reduce the tension, and may improve vibration property of the vocal fold in patients with pathological sulcus vocalis.

Enabling Robots to Distinguish Between Aggressive and Joking Attitudes

During a conversation, the meaning of an utterance may drastically change depending on the attitude of the speaker. For example, offensive words may be used “seriously” to threaten or “jokingly” to tease. However, robots do not have yet the capacity to understand such nuance. Therefore, we have developed an attitude recognition system that allows robots to evaluate whether an utterance with an offensive lexical content is aggressive (serious) or a joke. First, we created a data set of 7199 utterances (16 participants) that reproduces the different attitudes toward robots that we observed in field experiments. Second, we implemented voice quality features for breathy voice, creaky voice (or vocal fry), and pressed voice analysis, combined them with conventional prosodic features, and developed a neural network architecture to estimate the “perceived level of joking” of the utterances. Finally, we compared the performance of the proposed method to standard approaches for speech emotion recognition. We show that the combination of voice quality and prosodic features we proposed outperforms at this task the conventional neural network used for speech emotion recognition. The proposed system predicts the “perceived level of joking” of an utterance with an accuracy comparable to what a human would guess.

Objective Analysis Of Voice Quality In Patients With Thyroid Pathology

The goal of this study is to analyze the voice in patients with thyroid pathology through two objective indexes with great diagnostic accuracy. Overall vocal quality was evaluated with the Acoustic Voice Quality Index (AVQI v.03.01) and the breathy voice with the Acoustic Breathiness Index (ABI). Observational case-control study. Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de Candelaria. Fifty-eight subjects, 29 controls and 29 thyroidectomy candidates. All participants with thyroid pathology completed the Spanish version of Voice Handicap Index-10. Also, patient complaints relating to possible laryngeal dysfunction were assessed through closed questions. A sustained vowel and three phonetically balanced sentences were recorded for each subject (118 samples). AVQI v.03.01 and ABI were assessed using the Praat program. Two raters perceptually evaluated each voice sample by using the Grade parameter of GRABS scale. Acoustic analysis shows that 55.17% of subjects present values above the pathological threshold of the AVQI, and 58.62% above that of the ABI. Results of the Student's test comparisons of the AVQI and ABI values between the control group and the thyroid group show significantly higher values of AVQI (t[56] =-3.85, p<.001) and ABI (t[54.39] =-4.82, p<.001) in thyroidectomy candidates. A mild decrease in vocal quality is part of the symptomatology presented by thyroidectomy candidates.

Presbylarynx, Functional Voice Disorders, Muscle Tension Dysphonia

Presbylarynx refers to age-related structural changes of the vocal folds that include muscle atrophy, reduced neuromuscular control, loss of superficial lamina propria layer, and reduced pliability. The changes result in thin and bowed vocal folds, increased vocal effort requirements, breathy voice, change in habitual pitch, and strain. The primary treatment options are voice therapy focused on strengthening breath support and the intrinsic muscles of the larynx, and optimization of resonance; injection augmentation of the vocal folds; and type I thyroplasty. Functional dysphonia is defined as change in voice quality in the absence of structural or neurological abnormalities of the larynx. Muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) is a subtype of functional voice disorders and involves laryngeal muscle tension imbalance due to excessive or dysregulated activation resulting often in strained or breathy voice. MTD can be divided into primary (psychological etiology or vocal misuse) and secondary (compensatory for organic laryngeal pathology). The mainstay of treatment for MTD is voice therapy, along with medical or surgical treatment of the underlying vocal pathology in secondary MTD. Mutational falsetto, or puberphonia, is a functional voice disorder where a high-pitched, pre-adolescent voice fails to transition to the lower pitch of adulthood. This review contains 5 figures, 7 tables, 4 videos and 10 references Key Words: Presbylarynx, Injection augmentation, Type I thyroplasty, Primary muscle tension dysphonia, Secondary muscle tension dysphonia, Muscle tension patterns, Manual circumlaryngeal therapy, Functional dysphonia, Mutational falsetto

Phonetics of White Hmong vowel and tonal contrasts

Hmong languages, particularly White Hmong, are well studied for their complex tone systems that incorporate pitch, phonation, and duration differences. Still, prior work has made use mostly of tones elicited in their citation forms in carrier phrases. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of both the vowel and tone systems of White Hmong from recordings of read speech. We confirm several features of the language, including the presence of nasal vowels (rather than derived nasalized vowels through coarticulation with a coda [ŋ]), the description of certain tone contours, and the systematic presence of breathy and creaky voice on two of the tones. We also find little evidence of additional intonational f0 targets. However, we show that some tones vary greatly by their position in utterance, and propose novel descriptions for several of them. Finally, we show that $\textrm{H}1^{\!*}$ –H2*, a widely used measure of voice quality and phonation in Hmong and across languages, does not adequately distinguish modal from non-modal phonation in this data set, and argue that noise measures like Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) are more robust to phonation differences in corpora with more variability.

Intubation-Related Laryngeal Deficiency and Vocal Fold Immobility in Pediatric Premature Patients.

We report a posterior laryngeal rating system and measures of voice disability in pediatric patients undergoing phonosurgery for vocal fold paralysis. Posterior glottic deficiency may account for persistent voice disability. Retrospective Study. Retrospective analyses of 66 subjects with primary unilateral vocal fold paralysis were reviewed for the status of posterior glottis and voice disability (Pediatric Voice Handicap Index [pVHI]). Gestation age (GA), weight, and medical/surgical history were reviewed. The width, length, and depth of the larynx were analyzed to create a reproducible rating scale. Mean GA was 29 weeks, with an intubation history for all subjects, with 90% having a left vocal fold immobility. Cardiac surgery was performed in 92% of subjects. A progressive rating (type 0-3) Benjamin Defect Severity Scale (BDSS) was developed to rate the absence or presence of a posterior abnormality. BDSS-2 and BDSS-3 subjects were more likely to have low birth weight. Extremely preterm GA was more likely to be associated with BDSS-1 (mild) or BDSS-2. History of multiple and prolonged intubations were seen more frequently in BDSS-2 or BDSS-3. Post-op pVHI reduced an average of 15 points for BDSS-0 to BDSS-2, but only 3 points for BDSS-3. Post-op pVHI matched normal values for preintervention dysphonic children. The presence of a persistent breathy voice after intervention for unilateral vocal fold immobility is potentially associated with posterior glottic defects. Low birth weight with multiple/prolonged intubation is more likely to be present with higher-grade BDs, whereas low GA is more likely to be associated with BDSS-1 to BDSS-2. 4 Laryngoscope, 131:2550-2557, 2021.

Electroglottographic Analysis of the Voice in Young Male Role of Kunqu Opera

The phonation types used in the young male role in Kunqu Opera were investigated. Two national young male role singers volunteered as the subjects. Each singer performed three voice conditions: singing, stage speech, and reading lyrics. Three electroglottogram parameters, the fundamental frequency, contact quotient, and speed quotient, were analyzed. Electroglottogram parameters were different between voice conditions. Five phonation types were found by clustering analysis in singing and stage speech: (1) breathy voice, (2) high adduction modal voice, (3) modal voice, (4) untrained falsetto, and (5) high adduction falsetto. The proportion of each phonation type was not identical in singing and stage speech. The relationship between phonation type and pitch was multiple to one in the low pitch range, and one to one in the high pitch range. The sound pressure levels were related to the phonation types. Five phonation types, instead of only the two phonation types (modal voice and falsetto) that are identified in traditional Kunqu Opera singing theory, were concomitantly used in the young male role’s artistic voices. These phonation types were more similar to those of the young female roles than to those of the other male roles in the Kunqu Opera.

The tone system of Ruc and tonogenesis in Vietic languages

Rục, a dialect of the ethnic group of Chứt spoken in the mountainous area in Quảng Bình province, has been describing as a tonal language with four tones characterized by pitch (F0), voice quality and laryngeal features; however, there has been no experimental study on the tone system of Rục. In Summer 2019, we recorded 20 Ruc speakers (10 women) reading a wordlist including 66 words made of five vowels /iː, ɛː, uː, ɔː, aː/ in combination with different dental and velar onsets and the four tones. The results show that the four tones in Rục are differentiated by pitch height and pitch contour. Moreover, spectral measurements (H1-H2, H1-A1, H1-A2 and CPP) indicate that two low-register tones (derived from voiced onsets) have a breathy voice compared to a modal voice in two high-register tones (derived from voiceless onsets). In words with the two low-register tones, vowels tend to be pronounced with a higher aperture (a lower F1) than in high-register tones context. These results support and update theories on tonongenesis and registrogenesis in Vietic languages and Mon-Khmer languages in general.

Korean laryngeal contrast revisited: An electroglottographic study on denasalized and oral stops

In several Korean dialects, domain-initial nasal onsets undergo denasalization as a recent sound change. Nasal stops may be realized as prevoiced or even devoiced stops. This makes it necessary to examine the interplay of phonetic properties of the denasalized and the three oral stop series as a whole, in synchrony and diachrony. What are their concomitant and conflicting properties? Our study provides a bigger picture of the laryngeal contrast in Seoul and Gyeonggi Korean by examining the acoustic distributions related to the laryngeal properties of the four stop series, using acoustic and electroglottographic data. VOT and f0 play important roles in the distinction of the four stop series, in line with previous studies. While the contribution of voice quality is relatively minor, we show that it plays an essential role of disambiguation when the VOT–f0 space gets crowded: When lenis stops can be confused with other stops, there is an enhancement of breathy voice. Finally, we discuss stop variation according to prosodic contexts. We highlight the basis of both syntagmatic variation and paradigmatic contrast in their phonetic implementations. They illustrate a constant reorganization to reconcile contrast maintenance with constraints from articulatory and perceptual systems, as well as language-specific structures.

Investigating blunt force trauma to the larynx: The role of inferior-superior vocal fold displacement on phonation

Blunt force trauma to the larynx, which may result from motor vehicle collisions, sports activities, etc., can cause significant damage, often leading to displaced fractures of the laryngeal cartilages, thereby disrupting vocal function. Current surgical interventions primarily focus on airway restoration to stabilize the patient, with restoration of vocal function usually being a secondary consideration. Due to laryngeal fracture, asymmetric vertical misalignment of the left or right vocal fold (VF) in the inferior-superior direction often occurs. This affects VF closure and can lead to a weak, breathy voice requiring increased vocal effort. It is unclear, however, how much vertical VF misalignment can be tolerated before voice quality degrades significantly. To address this need, the influence of inferior-superior VF displacement on phonation is investigated in 1.0mm increments using synthetic, self-oscillating VF models in a physiologically-representative facility. Acoustic (SPL, frequency, H1-H2, jitter, and shimmer), kinematic (amplitude and phase differences), and aerodynamic parameters (flow rate and subglottal pressure) are investigated as a function of inferior-superior vertical displacement. Significant findings include that once the inferior-superior medial length of the VF is surpassed, sustained phonation degrades precipitously, becoming severely pathological. If laryngeal reconstruction approaches can ensure VF contact is maintained during phonation (i.e., vertical displacement doesn’t surpass VF medial length), improved vocal outcomes are expected.

Sulcus vocalis in spasmodic dysphonia—A retrospective study

BackgroundSpasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a neurological condition of the larynx characterised by task specific, involuntary spasms of the intrinsic laryngeal muscles causing frequent voice breaks during speech. The current treatment modality involves Botulinum Toxin injections into the affected group of muscles. This has yielded satisfactory results in Adductor SD (ADSD) and mixed SD but not in Abductor SD (ABSD). Sulcus vocalis is a morphological condition of the vocal folds with invagination of the superficial epithelium into the lamina propria or deeper layers. It is characterised by breathiness in voice and hypophonia.In our voice clinic, patients diagnosed with SD were occasionally found to have a sulcus on flexible stroboscopy. Studies have revealed an asymmetric stimulation of both the adductor and abductor group of muscles in ABSD and a predominant possibly symmetric stimulation of the adductor group of muscles in ADSD. Our objective was to study any significant association between vocal fold sulcus and two groups within SD; group one being ADSD and group two being both ABSD and Mixed SD. A literature review did not reveal any studies suggesting an association between SD and vocal fold sulcus to date. MethodsA retrospective review of the stroboscopic video recordings as well as file records of all patients diagnosed with SD between January 2016 and September 2019 was conducted at our voice clinic. The first author was the laryngologist who had diagnosed SD and its type on the basis of hearing the voice and making the patient perform various vocal tasks with and without flexible videostroboscopy. The SD patients were divided into two groups with the first group consisting of ADSD patients and the second group consisting of ABSD as well as Mixed SD patients. The presence or absence of vocal fold sulcus was noted in all the SD patients. Odds ratio was used to establish statistical significance of the presence of vocal fold sulcus in the two SD groups. ResultsAmong the 106 patients of SD, 62 patients were males and 44 were females. A total of 84 patients were diagnosed as ADSD, 10 as ABSD and 12 as Mixed SD patients.Vocal fold sulcus was noted in 5 out of 84 patients of ADSD, 4 out of 10 patients of ABSD, and in 3 out of 12 patients of mixed SD. Odds Ratio of 7.37 (C.I. = 2.063–26.35) was obtained for the second group of patients i.e. ABSD and Mixed SD. ConclusionOur study revealed a significant association between patients of SD having an abductor component (ABSD and mixed SD) and vocal fold sulcus. The two hypothesis proposed for this are the possibility of asymmetrical adductor and abductor muscle stimulation in SD being responsible for the development of a vocal fold sulcus or the primary presence of a vocal fold sulcus contributing to altered sensory feedback resulting in SD. Further study to evaluate this, as well as a study of the vocal response to medialisation procedures for patients of ABSD with sulcus is recommended.

Using Crowd-Sourced Speech Data to Study Socially Constrained Variation in Nonmodal Phonation.

This study examines the status of nonmodal phonation (e.g. breathy and creaky voice) in British English using smartphone recordings from over 2,500 speakers. With this novel data collection method, it uncovers effects that have not been reported in past work, such as a relationship between speakers’ education and their production of nonmodal phonation. The results also confirm that previous findings on nonmodal phonation, including the greater use of creaky voice by male speakers than female speakers, extend to a much larger and more diverse sample than has been considered previously. This confirmation supports the validity of using crowd-sourced data for phonetic analyses. The acoustic correlates that were examined include fundamental frequency, H1*-H2*, cepstral peak prominence, and harmonic-to-noise ratio.

Audit of Neurological Complications After Thyroid Surgery

The incidence of permanent neurological complications after thyroid surgery is less than 2% and rarely life threatening. Most of the reported neurological complications are related to changes in voice or breathing difficulty. Symptoms of a foreign body sensation in the throat are an unpleasant and persistent complication, which has rarely been reported after thyroid surgery. Analysis of records of 170 patients undergoing various types of thyroid operations over a 6-year period was done. Postoperative complications with emphasis on the neurological complications were documented. The common post-thyroidectomy neurological complications noted were hoarseness of voice (6 patients), loss of voice pitch (7), breathy voice (8), respiratory stridor (2), and dysphagia to liquids (8). Most of these were transient and recovered spontaneously within weeks. Furthermore, we report a foreign body/sticky sensation in the throat as an atypical neurological complication. It was found to occur in 5 patients and significantly persisted in 3 patients at a 6-month follow-up after surgery. The postoperative symptoms commonly noticed after thyroid surgery were related to the motor innervation component of the external branch of the superior laryngeal or the recurrent laryngeal nerve. These symptoms underwent spontaneous resolution over a few weeks period after surgery in most of the patients. Additionally, we documented a foreign body sensation in the throat in 5 patients which is possibly a sequela of sensory denervation of the supra-glottic mucosa in the region supplied by the internal branch of the superior laryngeal nerve. Unlike motor symptoms, this foreign body sensation persisted in 3 out of 5 patients (60%) at 6 months of follow-up.

Histogram of States Based Assistive System for Speech Impairment Due to Neurological Disorders.

Assistive speech technology is a challenging task because of the impaired nature of dysarthric speech, such as breathy voice, strained speech, distorted vowels, and consonants. Learning compact and discriminative embeddings for dysarthric speech utterances is essential for impaired speech recognition. We propose a Histogram of States (HoS)-based approach that uses Deep Neural Network-Hidden Markov Model (DNN-HMM) to learn word lattice-based compact and discriminative embeddings. Best state sequence chosen from word lattice is used to represent dysarthric speech utterance. A discriminative model-based classifier is then used to recognize these embeddings. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using three datasets, namely 15 acoustically similar words, 100-common words datasets of the UA-SPEECH database, and a 50-words dataset of the TORGO database. The proposed HoS-based approach performs significantly better than the traditional Hidden Markov Model and DNN-HMM-based approaches for all three datasets. The discriminative ability and the compactness of the proposed HoS-based embeddings lead to the best accuracy of impaired speech recognition.