Distribution Of Sounds Research Articles

Comparative study of clinical and MRI features of TMD patients with or without joint effusion: a retrospective study

BackgroundThe relationship between joint effusion and temporomandibular disorders (TMD) remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation among joint effusion, clinical features and MRI imaging features of TMD.MethodsA total of 1532 temporomandibular joints (TMJs) from 766 patients (605 females and 161 males) with the mean age of 31.68 ± 13.71 years from January 2022 to June 2023 were included in the study. Clinical and MRI features were collected and analyzed. Chi-Square test, Spearman correlation coefficient and binary logistic regression analysis were performed.ResultsPatients with joint effusion were significantly older and had smaller value of MIO (p < 0.001). There were significant differences in the distribution of joint sounds (with or without), joint pain (with or without), disc morphology (biconcave, contracture, irregular and lengthened) and disc position between joint effusion group (JE) and non-joint effusion group (NA) (P < 0.05).The odds of having joint effusion were 1.726 higher in patients with joint sounds when compared to those without joint sounds. The odds of having joint effusion were 8.463 higher in patients with joint pain when compared to those without joint pain. The odds of having joint effusion were 2.277 higher in patients with contracture when compared to those with biconcave. The odds of having joint effusion were 1.740 higher in patients with anterior disc displacement with reduction (ADDWR) when compared to those with normal disc position. The prediction accuracy of this model is 74.9%, and the area under curve (AUC) is 79.5%, indicating that it can be used for the prediction and the judgment effect is average.ConclusionsThe results demonstrated that joint sounds, joint pain, contracture, and ADDWR are high risk factors for joint effusion, especially joint pain.Trial registrationThis study was retrospectively registered on 28/03/2022 and endorsed by the Ethics Committee of Affiliated Stomatology Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University (LCYJ2022014).

Temperature shapes language sonority: Revalidation from a large dataset.

Multiple factors of the natural environment have been found to impact and mold the phonetic patterns of human speech, among which the potential correlation between sonority and temperature has garnered significant attention. We leverage a large database containing basic vocabularies of 5,293 languages and calculate the average sonority for each language by adopting a universal sonority scale. Our findings confirm a positive correlation between sonority and temperature across macroareas and language families, whereas this relationship cannot be discerned within language families. We suggest that the adaptation of the distribution of speech sounds within languages is a slow process which is moreover insensitive to minor differences in temperature experienced by speakers as they carry their languages to new regions. Nevertheless, at the global level a solid relationship emerges. Furthermore, we delve deeper into the nature of the relationship and contend that it is mainly due to cold temperatures having a weakening effect on sonority. This research provides compelling additional evidence that climatic factors contribute to shaping language and its evolution.

Open-set lung sound recognition model based on conditional Gaussian capsule network and variational time–frequency feature reconstruction

Lung sound auscultation is an essential method for diagnosing lung diseases; however, most existing lung sound recognition methods fail to identify classes that are unknown in training. Thus, we proposed an open-set lung sound recognition model based on the conditional Gaussian capsule network and variational time–frequency feature reconstruction. The proposed model incorporates an inference network, a cubic encoder, an attention module, a classifier, a cubic decoder, and a generative network. First, the inference network is employed to extract the time–frequency features of lung sounds at a single time step. Then, the variational distribution of lung sounds is computed using the capsule network and optimized to approximate the Gaussian model of the class to which the sample belongs according to the labels. Time–frequency synchronized feature extraction and reconstruction are performed on the entire lung sound sample using the cubic encoder and cubic decoder. Finally, we utilize the generative network to refactor the lung sound features for open-set recognition. The proposed model was evaluated experimentally on a combined dataset using two different category assignment schemes. The results demonstrate that the proposed model achieved accuracies of 82.31% and 88.47%, respectively, thereby outperforming existing methods.

Spatial distribution of heavy-weight floor impact sounds according to the household location in a box-frame concrete building

In this study, factors influencing the heavy-weight floor impact sounds were analyzed in situ while considering 59 households in a residential building with identical plans and floor structures. A formula to calculate the contribution of the Li,Fmax of each frequency band to the LiA,Fmax was suggested and the main frequency range was determined as 95% of the LiA,Fmax. Further, a hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted on the Li,Fmax, derived for the main frequency range for a rubber ball and a tire each. As a result, the similarity between heavy-weight floor impact sounds in households located on the same floor was found to be higher than that between sounds in households located on different floors. This difference may be attributed to the fact that the households on the same floor share the same floor slab.

Iz fonetske problematike govora Banjske i Gojbulje

This paper provides an inventory and distribution of consonant and vocal sounds in certain settlements in the lower parts of the river Sitnica (Banjska and Gojbulja villages) near Vucitrn. The main intention of the interpreted material is to show the phonetic peculiarities of the speech of Donja Sitnica on a synchronic level and thus contribute to the knowledge of Serbian languages in the area of Kosovo. It can be seen that the Kosovo-Resava substratum has suffered sediments from other dialects from the neighboring Albanian language, which defines the investigated languages as peripheral. Therefore, the structures of the researched micro zones can be recognized as having multiple influences, which come from the progressive stokavian speech, the Prizren - South Morava dialect, Montenegrin speech and non Slavic linguistic circumstances. In the vowel system, the influences from the first three directions are more present, while in consonantism there are noticeable features from the structure of the Albanian language.

Paths and opportunities: geolinguistic methods in dialectology

The dimensional approach to language is a feature of contemporary linguistic re- search, in which the three main dimensions of language functioning – spatial, tempo- ral, and human – are brought together as an integral whole. Geolinguistics as a specific method of work and approach to analysis, approaches the temporal and social aspects from the spatial point of view. This method has made a major contribution to the ex- ploration of the spatiality of linguistic phenomena and the closely related regularities. The basic material is a collection of dialectal or multilingual words, represented by maps, arranged in atlases, which depict the distribution of sounds, shapes, words, and meanings. The origin of geolinguistics can be dated to the last quarter of the 19th century, and its development to the 20th century: in addition to classical dialectology and diachronic linguistics, the new grammar school also played a major role in the creation of this method. Over time, its use in the study of regional variants within languages has in- creasingly extended to cross-language studies as well. Nowadays, the method of pro- ducing language atlases has become much more sophisticated: they reflect both the semantic changes in linguistics that are periodically renewed, and the basic data rep- resentation procedures brought about by modern technological developments.

Audiogram of Chinese Phonemes: Construction and Evaluation

Introduction: In aural rehabilitation, speech bananas are often used as a counseling tool to visually indicate one’s auditory access to speech sounds. We constructed a Chinese-based speech banana to provide Chinese-speaking users with a more appropriate distribution of Chinese speech sounds on an audiogram. Method: The location of each phoneme was defined by its frequency and intensity. To evaluate the clinical validity of the proposed speech banana, 15 Chinese-speaking hearing aid users were recruited; the predictability of the present speech banana was examined in terms of sensitivity and specificity based on their aided sound-field narrow-band noise thresholds and speech recognition thresholds. Results: The data revealed high specificity rates of 94.2% below 8,000 Hz and high sensitivity of 96.8% above 8,000 Hz. Specificity measures the percentage of perceptible sounds correctly identified as such by the Chinese speech banana (CSB); sensitivity measures the percentage of imperceptible sounds that are correctly identified as such by the CSB. Discussion/Conclusion: The CSB represents a potentially valid counseling tool to identify phonemes that have poor perceptual quality and indicate auditory access gaps.

Songbirds are excellent auditory discriminators, irrespective of age and experience

Human infants but not adults possess the ability to perceive differences between non-native language phoneme categories. The predominant explanation for this age-related decline in discriminative ability is the effect of statistical learning driven by sensory exposure: phoneme categories of the native language take precedence, have a higher frequency of occurrence and may encompass category distinctions in non-native languages. Alternatively, one could explain the decline through a reduction in discriminative abilities attributable to ageing. Thus, to what extent is auditory perception influenced either by experience or by age-related processes? Here, we attempted to answer this question, which cannot easily be disentangled in humans, in songbirds, which share many properties with humans: both learn the statistical distribution of sounds in their environment, both possess neural circuits to process vocalizations of their own species and plasticity in these circuits is subject to critical periods. To study the effects of experience and ageing, we trained zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata , to discriminate short from long versions of a single zebra finch song syllable type. Birds in four groups distinguished by their age (old versus young) and level of auditory experience (with song experience versus completely isolated from song) could learn to discriminate arbitrarily fine differences between song syllables, although we found a trend that upholds the statistical learning hypothesis: birds with song experience performed better than birds with no experience. Furthermore, birds in all groups were able to generalize their learning to new stimuli of the same type, and they were able to rapidly adapt their learned discrimination boundaries. Finally, we found that songbirds could accurately discriminate randomly selected renditions of a stereotyped adult song syllable, revealing a flexible ability to discriminate conspecific vocalizations. • Sensory experience matters more than age for auditory perception in songbirds. • Songbirds generalize learned categories to novel stimuli. • Learned categories are flexible and category boundaries can be relearned easily. • Songbirds can learn random categories accurately. • Their auditory systems represent species-specific sounds accurately and flexibly.

Auditory selective adaptation moment by moment, at multiple timescales.

Over the course of a lifetime, adults develop perceptual categories for the vowels and consonants in their native language, based on the distribution of those sounds in their environment. However, in any given listening situation, the short-term distribution of sounds can cause changes in this long-term categorization. For example, if the same sound (the "adaptor") is heard many times in a short period of time, listeners adapt and become less prone to hearing that sound. Although hundreds of speech selective adaptation experiments have been published, there is almost no information about how long this adaptation lasts. Using stimuli chosen to produce very large initial adaptation, we test adaptation effects with essentially no delay, and with delays of 25 min, 90 min, and 5.5 hr; these tests probe the duration of adaptation both in the (single) ear to which the adaptor was presented, and in the opposite ear. Reliable adaptation remains 5.5 hr after exposure in the same-ear condition, whereas it is undetectable at 90 min in the opposite ear. Surprisingly, the amount of residual adaptation is largely unaffected by whether the listener is exposed to speech between adaptation and test, unless the speech shares critical acoustic properties with the adapting sounds. Analyses of the shifts on three time scales (seconds, minutes, and hours) provide information about the multiple levels of analysis that the speech signal undergoes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Inferring recent evolutionary changes in speech sounds.

In this paper, we investigate evolutionarily recent changes in the distributions of speech sounds in the world's languages. In particular, we explore the impact of language contact in the past two millennia on today's distributions. Based on three extensive databases of phonological inventories, we analyse the discrepancies between the distribution of speech sounds of ancient and reconstructed languages, on the one hand, and those in present-day languages, on the other. Furthermore, we analyse the degree to which the diffusion of speech sounds via language contact played a role in these discrepancies. We find evidence for substantive differences between ancient and present-day distributions, as well as for the important role of language contact in shaping these distributions over time. Moreover, our findings suggest that the distributions of speech sounds across geographic macro-areas were homogenized to an observable extent in recent millennia. Our findings suggest that what we call the Implicit Uniformitarian Hypothesis, at least with respect to the composition of phonological inventories, cannot be held uncritically. Linguists who would like to draw inferences about human language based on present-day cross-linguistic distributions must consider their theories in light of even short-term language evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'Reconstructing prehistoric languages'.

A synthesis of health benefits of natural sounds and their distribution in national parks

Parks are important places to listen to natural sounds and avoid human-related noise, an increasingly rare combination. We first explore whether and to what degree natural sounds influence health outcomes using a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. We identified 36 publications examining the health benefits of natural sound. Meta-analyses of 18 of these publications revealed aggregate evidence for decreased stress and annoyance (g = -0.60, 95% CI = -0.97, -0.23) and improved health and positive affective outcomes (g = 1.63, 95% CI = 0.09, 3.16). Examples of beneficial outcomes include decreased pain, lower stress, improved mood, and enhanced cognitive performance. Given this evidence, and to facilitate incorporating public health in US national park soundscape management, we then examined the distribution of natural sounds in relation to anthropogenic sound at 221 sites across 68 parks. National park soundscapes with little anthropogenic sound and abundant natural sounds occurred at 11.3% of the sites. Parks with high visitation and urban park sites had more anthropogenic sound, yet natural sounds associated with health benefits also were frequent. These included animal sounds (audible for a mean of 59.3% of the time, SD: 23.8) and sounds from wind and water (mean: 19.2%, SD: 14.8). Urban and other parks that are extensively visited offer important opportunities to experience natural sounds and are significant targets for soundscape conservation to bolster health for visitors. Our results assert that natural sounds provide important ecosystem services, and parks can bolster public health by highlighting and conserving natural soundscapes.

Distributional learning of speech sound categories is gated by sensitive periods

Perceptual attunement to the native phonetic repertoire occurs over the first year of life: an infant's discrimination of non-native phonetic contrasts declines while their discrimination of native phonetic contrasts improves, with the timing of change consistent with sensitive periods. The statistics of speech sound distributions is one source of input used to collapse non-native phonetic category boundaries, while sharpening native ones. Distributional learning can be a domain-general mechanism, yet given the timing of perceptual attunement, we hypothesized that this learning mechanism may be maturationally delimited in the content domain of phonetic categories. Here, we assessed whether sensitivity to the distribution of speech sounds in the environment declines as the period of perceptual attunement closes. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate whether neuronal responses to native ‘ra’ and ‘la’ phones are modulated differently in older vs young infants by exposure to either a bimodal or unimodal sound distribution spanning the [r] ~ [l] phoneme space. The native contrast, ra-la, is discriminable at all three ages, ensuring that we were testing the distributional learning mechanism, rather than confounding it with a decline in discrimination to a non-native distinction. English monolingual infants (n = 131) at 5-, 9- and 12-months-old were familiarized to either a unimodal or bimodal distribution of /ra/−/la/ speech sounds. Immediately following familiarization, an ERP oddball task was used to assess discrimination. Results showed that brief exposure to a bi- vs uni-modal distribution is sufficient to alter neuronal responses to subsequent /ra/ vs /la/ speech sounds at 5-months and 9-months, but not at 12-months. These results are the first to capture a progressive decline in sensitivity to distributional statistics in the environment. A potential mechanistic explanation based on critical period biology is discussed.

The Causes of the Distribution of Jian and Tuan Sounds in Linzhou Dialect

Based on the field investigation and combined with previous studies, this thesis makes a comprehensive description of the variation and distribution of jian and tuan sounds in Linzhou dialect. On this basis, the causes of the distribution are further explored from the perspective of sociolinguistics. Through the multidimensional investigation of the subjects and the general analysis of social and cultural factors, it is found that jian and tuan sounds are in the trend of merger and such a trend will continue to develop in the future. Besides, it is also found that the dialects in neighboring places as well as the impact of Standard Mandarin play a very important role in the merger progress.

Spatial Distribution of Normal Lung Sounds in Healthy Individuals under Varied Inspiratory Load and Flow Conditions.

Respiratory sounds yield pertinent information about respiratory function in both health and disease. Normal lung sound intensity is a characteristic that correlates well with airflow and it can therefore be used to quantify the airflow changes and limitations imposed by respiratory diseases. The dual aims of this study are firstly to establish whether previously reported asymmetries in normal lung sound intensity are affected by varying the inspiratory threshold load or the airflow of respiration, and secondly to investigate whether fixed sample entropy can be used as a valid measure of lung sound intensity. Respiratory sounds were acquired from twelve healthy individuals using four contact microphones on the posterior skin surface during an inspiratory threshold loading protocol and a varying airflow protocol. The spatial distribution of the normal lung sounds intensity was examined. During the protocols explored here the normal lung sound intensity in the left and right lungs in healthy populations was found to be similar, with asymmetries of less than 3 dB. This agrees with values reported in other studies. The fixed sample entropy of the respiratory sound signal was also calculated and compared with the gold standard root mean square representation of lung sound intensity showing good agreement.

An algorithm for learning phonological classes from distributional similarity

An important question in phonology is to what degree the learner uses distributional information rather than substantive properties of speech sounds when learning phonological structure. This paper presents an algorithm that learns phonological classes from only distributional information: the contexts in which sounds occur. The input is a segmental corpus, and the output is a set of phonological classes. The algorithm is first tested on an artificial language, with both overlapping and nested classes reflected in the distribution, and retrieves the expected classes, performing well as distributional noise is added. It is then tested on four natural languages. It distinguishes between consonants and vowels in all cases, and finds more detailed, language-specific structure. These results improve on past approaches, and are encouraging, given the paucity of the input. More refined models may provide additional insight into which phonological classes are apparent from the distributions of sounds in natural languages.

Characteristics of Pulmonary Auscultation in Patients with 2019 Novel Coronavirus in China

Background: Effective auscultation are often hard to implement in isolation wards. To date, little is known about the characteristics of pulmonary auscultation in novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pneumonia. The aim of this study was to explore the clinical feasibility of electronic stethoscopes in isolation wards and the features of pulmonary auscultation in COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods: This cross-sectional, observational study was conducted among patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 at Wuhan Red-cross Hospital during the period from January 27, 2020 to February 12, 2020. Standard auscultation with an electronic stethoscope was performed and electronic recordings of breath sounds were analyzed. Findings: 57 patients with average age of 60.6 years were enrolled. The most common symptoms was cough (73.7%) during auscultation. Most cases had bilateral lesions (96.4%) such as multiple ground-glass opacity (69.1%) and fibrous stripes (21.8%). High-quality auscultation recordings (98.8%) were obtained and coarse breath sounds, wheezes, medium-coarse crackles, fine crackles and Velcro crackles were identified. The distribution of coarse breath sounds was equivalent, while crackles occurred more frequently in basal lungs. Most cases had normal breath sounds in upper lungs, but the proportions of abnormal breath sounds increased in the basal fields where Velcro crackles were more commonly identified at the posterior chest. Interpretation: The present study describes common abnormalities in breath sounds and their distribution characteristics using electronic stethoscope, which to some extent provides insights into the pathophysiological and clinical process of the disease, suggesting that electronic auscultation can be readily applied at bedside in isolation wards to aid diagnosis and management of COVID-19 patients. Funding Statement: 1.3.5 project for disciplines of excellence, West China Hospital of Sichuan University (ZYJC18021). Declaration of Interests: The authors stated that there is no conflict of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: The study protocol conforms to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the institutional ethics board of West China Hospital of Sichuan University (No. 2020-126). Written informed consent was collected from all patients.

Perceived Target Range Shapes Human Sound-Localization Behavior.

The auditory system relies on binaural differences and spectral pinna cues to localize sounds in azimuth and elevation. However, the acoustic input can be unreliable, due to uncertainty about the environment, and neural noise. A possible strategy to reduce sound-location uncertainty is to integrate the sensory observations with sensorimotor information from previous experience, to infer where sounds are more likely to occur. We investigated whether and how human sound localization performance is affected by the spatial distribution of target sounds, and changes thereof. We tested three different open-loop paradigms, in which we varied the spatial range of sounds in different ways. For the narrowest ranges, target-response gains were highly idiosyncratic and deviated from an optimal gain predicted by error-minimization; in the horizontal plane the deviation typically consisted of a response overshoot. Moreover, participants adjusted their behavior by rapidly adapting their gain to the target range, both in elevation and in azimuth, yielding behavior closer to optimal for larger target ranges. Notably, gain changes occurred without any exogenous feedback about performance. We discuss how the findings can be explained by a sub-optimal model in which the motor-control system reduces its response error across trials to within an acceptable range, rather than strictly minimizing the error.

Who's talking and what are they saying: Phonetic cue distributions link speech and talker recognition

On the one hand, talker variability is one of the fundamental challenges for speech recognition: each talker has their own mapping from linguistic units to sounds, which means that an effective listener must use a different recognition function for each talker. On the other hand, talker variability means that speech is a source of rich information about who the talker is. This dual nature of talker variability means that speech and talker recognition are inextricably linked: knowing something about who is talking makes it easier to understand what they are saying, and knowing something about how someone talks unlocks the rich social meaning of speech. I argue that the concept of a talker's generative model, or the probabilistic distributions of sounds associated with each phonetic/linguistic category, is a useful general purpose conceptual tool for understanding the link between talker variability, speech recognition, and social identity. With such phonetic cue distributions, we can use information theoretic tools to quantify both the extent and structure of talker variability across different phonetic systems and establish in-principle consequences of talker variability for both speech recognition and socio-indexical inferences from speech.

The role of distributional information in cross-talker generalization of phonetic category retuning

Listeners use lexical information to retune phoneme categories. Previous findings on the specificity of such perceptual adjustments suggest that cross-talker generalization occurs when talkers are acoustically similar. An alternative mechanism implies that listeners are sensitive to the statistical distribution of phonetic variation across speakers and can use this sensitivity to track both group- and talker-specific phoneme boundaries. Our objective is to disambiguate between these two possibilities. In the experiment, listeners hear words with an ambiguous fricative produced by multiple speakers of American English. Utterances across talkers vary in two ways: 1) the similarity of particular talkers’ categorization curves and 2) the statistical distribution of sounds along the phonetic continuum (e.g., unimodal vs. bimodal) across talkers. We assess phonetic category retuning using novel words by novel talkers whose utterances either match or mismatch talker-specific properties or the distribution of phonetic realizations heard during exposure. If cross-talker generalization is similarity-based, listeners should generalize retuned phonetic representations to specific similar-sounding talkers at test. Alternatively, if listeners capitalize on the statistical distribution of exposure sounds, listeners should generalize to test talkers whose productions are consistent with the learned distribution. Results inform the conditions under which listeners form talker-independent representations of speech sound categories.

Statistical Learning of Speech Sounds in Dyslexic and Typical Reading Children

ABSTRACTStatistical learning has been proposed to underlie the developmental transition during infancy from allophonic to phonemic speech sound perception. Based on this, it can be hypothesized that in dyslexic individuals, core phonemic representation deficits arise from reduced sensitivity to the statistical distribution of sounds. This study aims to investigate (a) whether statistical learning contributes to the construction of phonemic representations in typical readers, and (b) whether deficits in statistical learning underlie dyslexia. Fifty-eight children performed an identification task of a non-native phonetic contrast, before and after exposure to the sounds of the continuum. Our results suggest that the statistical distribution of the presented sounds implicitly enhanced the formation of phonemic representations and that dyslexic readers make less use of the statistical cues embedded in oral language, resulting in less distinct phonemic categories and thus a higher risk for failing to establish robust connections between these and written language.