High-pitched Sounds Research Articles

Our spatial sense of pitch

We tend to perceive high-pitched sounds as coming from elevated sources. Often, they do. We tend to perceive high-pitched sounds as coming from elevated sources. Often, they do.

Post-Thyroidectomy Syndrome

Received March 19, 2014 Accepted April 9, 2014 Address for correspondence Ki Hwan Hong, MD Department of OtolaryngologyHead and Neck Surgery, Research Institute of Clinical Medicine, Chonbuk National University College of MedicineChonbuk National University Hospital, 20 Geonji-ro, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju 561-712, Korea Tel +82-63-250-1980 Fax +82-63-250-1986 E-mail khhong@chonbuk.ac.kr Phonatory and swallowing symptoms after thyroidectomy are well-known implications of laryngeal nerve injuries. The laryngeal nerve injuries, superior and inferior, are major complication that results in changes both to voice quality and production of high-pitched sounds, which is of utmost importance for voice professionals. However, these functional and subjective voice and swallowing symptoms were often neglected by clinicians. Most voice and swallowing alterations after thyroidectomy are self limited and are not related to demonstrable impaired nerves function. Several causes have been supposed to interpret these symptoms. They have been attributed to arytenoid trauma after endotracheal intubation, surgical trauma, modification of the vascular supply of the larynx, local pain in the neck, cricothyroid dysfunction, strap muscle malfunction, laryngotracheal fixation with impairment of vertical movement, and psychologic reaction to the operation. Because of the impact of patient’s perception on postoperative outcome in recent years, some groups have extensively investigated this functional post-thyroidectomy syndrome. All the published studies demonstrate that most patients who undergo thyroidectomy have at least some subjective vocal and/or swallowing complaints early after the operation. Despite increasing interest, prospective data about the long-term outcomes of functional postthyroidectomy syndrome are lacking. This paper is to review the long-term trend and evolution of voice and swallowing symptoms after thyroidectomy in the absence of laryngeal nerve injury. Korean J Otorhinolaryngol-Head Neck Surg 2014;57(5):297-303

Predictive packaging design: Tasting shapes, typefaces, names, and sounds

Many studies have documented that people match a variety of tastes, aromas, and flavours crossmodally to other sensory features, such as abstract shapes, names, and speech sounds. These findings have had a significant impact on how the sensory attributes of product packaging are understood and how they can contribute to product communication and hence enhance brand value. Here, we report on a study designed to assess how rounded vs. angular shapes, typefaces, and names, and high vs. low pitched sounds, can be combined in order to convey information about the taste (sweetness and sourness) of a product. Our results support the view that “sweet” tastes are better expressed by means of rounded shapes, typefaces, and names, and low-pitched sounds, whereas “sour tastes” are better conveyed by means of angular shapes, typefaces, and names, and high-pitched sounds. These results are discussed in light of the literature on crossmodal correspondences and predictive packaging design.

PARDON ME? HEARING LOSS IN WILD DOLPHINS

At some point in our lives most of us will have resorted to shouting during a conversation with an elderly relative. Unfortunately, as we age, sounds have to be louder to be heard and high-pitched sounds are no longer perceived. But are humans alone in suffering auditory decline with age? Certainly in captive dolphins, older members of the family do show signs of age-related hearing loss, but the same has never been observed in the wild. However, when a male Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin approximately 40 years old was rescued after it had stranded itself in an inland river near Foshan, China, in March 2012, Songhai Li, from Sanya Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and his colleagues seized the opportunity to find out (p. 4144).The team began by giving the rescued dolphin a hearing test. To do this, three EEG (electroencephalograph) suction-cup electrodes were placed on the dolphin's head and back, to measure electrical activity in response to a range of different sounds. The researchers varied both the frequency (kHz) of the sounds and the loudness to find the lowest threshold of hearing, namely the frequency of the quietest detected sound. For the 40-year-old dolphin this corresponded to a sound at 38 kHz. By comparing this with a hearing test from a younger 13-year-old male dolphin that had been stranded in a similar spot back in August 2007, the team could see that in the younger dolphin this threshold was at a higher frequency. Overall, the results showed that the older dolphin had more difficulty hearing high-frequency sounds, with a cut-off about 30–40 kHz lower than for the younger dolphin.The team next went on to record the dolphin's echolocation clicks using a hydrophone. Overall, compared with the younger dolphin, the older dolphin's peak and centre click frequencies were about 16 kHz lower. This shift suggests that the older dolphin shifted its echolocation clicks towards frequencies that it is able to hear. Both the decreased sensitivity to high-frequency calls and the compensation in vocalisations strongly suggest that wild dolphins also suffer from hearing loss.

Effect of pitch–space correspondence on sound-induced visual motion perception

The brain tends to associate specific features of stimuli across sensory modalities. The pitch of a sound is for example associated with spatial elevation such that higher-pitched sounds are felt as being "up" in space and lower-pitched sounds as being "down." Here we investigated whether changes in the pitch of sounds could be effective for visual motion perception similar to those in the location of sounds. We demonstrated that only sounds that alternate in up/down location induced illusory vertical motion of a static visual stimulus, while sounds that alternate in higher/lower pitch did not induce this illusion. The pitch of a sound did not even modulate the visual motion perception induced by sounds alternating in up/down location. Interestingly, though, sounds alternating in higher/lower pitch could become a driver for visual motion if they were paired in a previous exposure phase with vertical visual apparent motion. Thus, only after prolonged exposure, the pitch of a sound became an inducer for upper/lower visual motion. This occurred even if during exposure the pitch and location of the sounds were paired in an incongruent fashion. These findings indicate that pitch-space correspondence is not so strong to drive or modulate visual motion perception. However, associative exposure could increase the saliency of pitch-space relationships and then the pitch could induce visual motion perception by itself.

Sound symbolism in synesthesia: Evidence from a lexical–gustatory synesthete

Synesthesia is a condition in which perceptual or cognitive stimuli (e.g., a written letter) trigger atypical additional percepts (e.g., the color yellow). Although these cross-modal pairings appear idiosyncratic in that they superficially differ from synesthete to synesthete, underlying patterns do exist and these can, in some circumstances, reflect the cross-modal intuitions of nonsynesthetes (e.g., higher pitch sounds tend to be “seen” in lighter colors by synesthetes and are also paired to lighter colors by nonsynesthetes in cross-modal matching tasks). We recently showed that grapheme-color synesthetes are more sensitive to sound symbolism (i.e., cross-modal sound-meaning correspondences) in natural language compared to nonsynesthetes. Accordingly, we hypothesize that sound symbolism may be a guiding force in synesthesia to dictate what types of synesthetic experiences are triggered by words. We tested this hypothesis by examining the cross-modal mappings of lexical–gustatory synesthete, JIW, for whom words trigger flavor experiences. We show that certain phonological features (e.g., front vowels) systematically trigger particular categories of taste (e.g., bitter) in his synesthesia. Some of these associations agree with sound symbolic patterns in natural language. This supports the view that synesthesia may be an exaggeration of cross-modal associations found in the general population and that sound symbolic properties of language may arise from similar mechanisms as those found in synesthesia.

Formant frequency estimation of high-pitched vowels using weighted linear prediction

All-pole modeling is a widely used formant estimation method, but its performance is known to deteriorate for high-pitched voices. In order to address this problem, several all-pole modeling methods robust to fundamental frequency have been proposed. This study compares five such previously known methods and introduces a technique, Weighted Linear Prediction with Attenuated Main Excitation (WLP-AME). WLP-AME utilizes temporally weighted linear prediction (LP) in which the square of the prediction error is multiplied by a given parametric weighting function. The weighting downgrades the contribution of the main excitation of the vocal tract in optimizing the filter coefficients. Consequently, the resulting all-pole model is affected more by the characteristics of the vocal tract leading to less biased formant estimates. By using synthetic vowels created with a physical modeling approach, the results showed that WLP-AME yields improved formant frequencies for high-pitched sounds in comparison to the previously known methods (e.g., relative error in the first formant of the vowel [a] decreased from 11% to 3% when conventional LP was replaced with WLP-AME). Experiments conducted on natural vowels indicate that the formants detected by WLP-AME changed in a more regular manner between repetitions of different pitch than those computed by conventional LP.

Cross-modal mapping of visual and acoustic displays in infants: The effect of dynamic and static components

Children as well as adults make certain links between the visual and the acoustic domain. For example, higher pitched sounds are typically associated with visual stimuli that are brighter, smaller, and higher in space than those associated with sounds of lower pitch. The present study explored the existence of such links in infancy. More specifically, we investigated the relation between visuospatial height and auditory pitch in 7- to 12-month-olds, varying systematically the format of stimulus presentation. Presenting dynamic visual and acoustic stimuli led to positive findings relying on anticipatory looking measures: While listening to an ascending tone, infants looked longer where they had previously seen an upwards moving circle. While listening to a descending tone, they looked longer where they had previously seen a downwards moving circle. When static tones were combined with static visual stimuli in the same kind of display, no corresponding findings were obtained. Thus, the present work suggests that preverbal infants do not generally associate spatial location and pitch but do so systematically when dynamic stimuli are presented.

Dual-Pitch Processing Mechanisms in Primate Auditory Cortex

Pitch, our perception of how high or low a sound is on a musical scale, is a fundamental perceptual attribute of sounds and is important for both music and speech. After more than a century of research, the exact mechanisms used by the auditory system to extract pitch are still being debated. Theoretically, pitch can be computed using either spectral or temporal acoustic features of a sound. We have investigated how cues derived from the temporal envelope and spectrum of an acoustic signal are used for pitch extraction in the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), a vocal primate species, by measuring pitch discrimination behaviorally and examining pitch-selective neuronal responses in auditory cortex. We find that pitch is extracted by marmosets using temporal envelope cues for lower pitch sounds composed of higher-order harmonics, whereas spectral cues are used for higher pitch sounds with lower-order harmonics. Our data support dual-pitch processing mechanisms, originally proposed by psychophysicists based on human studies, whereby pitch is extracted using a combination of temporal envelope and spectral cues.

Cross-sensory correspondences and cross talk between dimensions of connotative meaning: Visual angularity is hard, high-pitched, and bright

Higher-pitched sounds are judged to be, among other things, sharper, harder, and brighter than lower-pitched sounds. Following Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgood (Journal of General Psychology 26:199-222, 1942), such cross-sensory correspondences are proposed to have a semantic basis, reflecting extensive bidirectional cross-activation among dimensions of connotative meaning. On this basis, the same core set of correspondences should emerge whichever sensory feature is used to probe it. More angular (sharper) shapes should, for example, be higher-pitched and have the same cross-sensory features as higher-pitched sounds. Experiments 1-3 employed a speeded classification task designed to reveal cross-sensory correspondences having a semantic basis. With words as to-be-classified stimuli and with shapes varying in angularity as concurrent incidental stimuli, congruity effects between angularity and each of hardness, pitch, and brightness were confirmed. Correspondences with a semantic basis need not be cross-modality in nature. Experiment 4 confirmed this by reproducing the brightness-angularity congruity effect when contrasting values for both features were encoded nonverbally within the visual modality. The varying nature and origins of cross-sensory correspondences and the basis on which they induce congruity effects in speeded classification are explored.

Flush hypertension during infusion of saline

Salt-sensitivity is present in approximately half of the population with essential hypertension.1 Among several methods used to diagnose salt-sensitivity, Weinberger’s saline infusion test is widely accepted; this test compares the blood pressure (BP) measured after infusing 2 l of isotonic saline over 4 h with the BP measured during a salt-restricted diet and administration of three 40-mg doses of oral furosemide. A 10 mmHg or greater difference in mean BP between the salt-loaded and salt-depleted phases of the test is defined salt-sensitivity.2 In three patients to be described, infusion of isotonic saline induced a surge of BP far in excess to the mild hypertensive effect required to diagnose salt-sensitive hypertension. Such episodes are not well described in the literature. ### Patient 1 A 96-year-old woman was referred with the diagnosis of left lower lobe pneumonia. Amoxicillin/clavulanate intravenous (i.v.) 1 g × 3/day was started. Notable in the patient’s medical history were multi-infarct dementia, dysphagia, grade I arterial hypertension, vitamin B12 and iron deficiency. Her regular medications were simvastatin 20 mg, furosemide 40 mg, vitamin B12 and ferum sulfate 160 mg/day. The patient’s BP readings on the day of admission were 185/90, 139/77, 145/65 mmHg, the heart rate 72 bpm, temperature 38.6°C. The serum creatinine was 0.7 mg/dl, WBC 12 300/mm3, polymorphonuclear leukocytes 79%. Two days later, the temperature returned to normal but the abdomen became distended with no passage of stool or gas and high-pitched bowel sounds suggesting intestinal obstruction or pseudoobstruction. On plain abdominal X-ray, the colon was distended, air visible in all colonic segments including the rectosigmoid and the maximum cecal diameter 7 cm. The BP was 138/70 mmHg. Serum levels of sodium, potassium, calcium and thyrotropin were within the normal range. On surgical consultation, a diagnosis of colonic pseudoobstruction was posited and conservative management recommended. The patient was kept fasted and i.v. saline was started. Four hours later, she became …

PARTIAL DEAFNESS TREATMENT IN CHILDREN: A PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE PARENTS’ PERSPECTIVE

BackgroundCochlear implant (CI) eligibility criteria have broadened recently to include individuals with partial deafness (PD). In 2002, the Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Poland, pioneered a particular technique of cochlear implantation termed partial deafness treatment (PDT) and achieved unrivalled rates of functional hearing preservation. Encouraged by the results in adults, a pediatric PDT program was initiated in 2004. The outcome of PDT for both adults and children has been well documented and assessed with objective measures of sound detection and speech discrimination. The current study explores outcomes in real life rather than in a clinical setting. We hypothesized that if PDT provides children with renewed listening ability it is likely to have a major impact on family life and that this impact should be able to be documented by parental reports.Material and MethodSeven parents of PDT cochlear-implanted children were surveyed using 20 open-ended prompts. The questionnaires were sent to patients’ homes. The parents were asked to answer the prompts in their own words.ResultsAll parents reported that after their child received cochlear implant there was a significant improvement in speech understanding and better perception of high pitched sounds. More than half the parents also noticed positive changes in speech production. The changes in communication abilities after CI positively influenced the child’s relationships with family members and school mates.ConclusionsThe results of this study support expanding the criteria for receiving a cochlear implant to include children with partial deafness.

Size–brightness correspondence: Crosstalk and congruity among dimensions of connotative meaning

Following Karwoski, Odbert, and Osgood (Journal of General Psychology 26:199-222, 1942), in the present article, cross-sensory correspondences are proposed to reflect the alignment of, and extensive bidirectional cross-activation among, dimensions of connotative meaning. The size-brightness correspondence predicted on this basis (in which smaller is aligned with brighter) was confirmed in two ways. First, when participants explored three wooden balls of different size by touch alone and indicated how bright they thought each of them was, the smaller ball was judged to be brighter than the bigger ball. Second, when these two balls served as response keys in a speeded brightness-classification task, participants were quicker and more likely to be correct when confirming that a stimulus was bright (dark) when this required them to press the smaller (bigger) key, than when it required them to press the bigger (smaller) key. This congruity effect originated from interactions embedded in the later stages of information processing concerned with stimulus classification and response selection. These results, together with the observation that the cross-sensory features associated with smallness are the same as those associated with higher pitch sounds (i.e., both attributes are more active, brighter, faster, lighter in weight, quieter, sharper, and weaker than their opposites), support the suggestion that there exists a core set of cross-sensory correspondences that emerges whichever stimulus feature is used to probe it.

K+ pump: From caterpillar midgut to human cochlea

Deafness is a serious condition that affects millions of people and can also lead to dementia. Moreover, Karet and associates reported in 1999 that mutations in the gene encoding H+ V-ATPase subunit B1 lead to deafness. Yet ionic flows that enable humans to hear high-pitched sounds at 20,000cycles/sec (20kHz) are not well understood. Sound is transduced to electrical signals by stereocilia of hair cells by influx of Ca2+ and K+ as the “transducer channel” opens transiently and reduces the ∼90mV (endolymph positive) endocochlear potential (EP) by ∼20mV as the receptor potential. The EP as well as concentrations of Ca2+, H+ and K+ must remain constant to produce reliable signals. Ca2+ entry is balanced by Ca2+ exit via a plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase (PMCA2a) but the Ca2+ exit is coupled to H+ entry. Moreover, K+ entry is balanced by K+ exit via a long diffusion route through several channels which is too slow to account for 20kHz signaling. The problem is solved by a new hypothesis in which an H+ V-ATPase generates the EP and removes the H+ while a new K+/H+ antiporter uses the voltage to drive H+ back in and the K+ back out. In the new model, Ca2+, H+ and K+ cycle between unstirred layers on the endolymph- and cytoplasmic- borders of the stereocilial membrane through distances of ∼20 nanometers with travel time of ∼10μs, which is fast enough to account for the 50μs open/close time for 20kHz signaling. Central to this model is the hypothesis that a K+ pump which secretes K+ into a K+-rich compartment is composed of a voltage producing (electrogenic) H+ V-ATPase that is electrically coupled to a voltage-driven (electrophoretic) K+/nH+ antiporter (KHA). Conversely, for an H+ V-ATPase to secrete K+ into a K+ rich compartment, it must be coupled to a KHA. Richard Keynes reviewed evidence in 1969 that such a K+ pump, which he called a Type V pump, is present in the stria vascularis of cochlea and the goblet cell apical membrane of caterpillars. Its signature is a large outside positive potential of ∼100mV, K+ secretion into a K+ rich compartment and reversible inhibition by anoxia. The key role of the Type V K+ pump in generating the EP was recognized by Sellick and Bock in 1974 and others but has disappeared from the hearing literature during the past decades. Its revival here is based on immunolocalization of KHA2 in the stereocilial membrane and Gillespie’s generously shared mass spectroscopy evidence that all but one of the V1 ATPase subunits are detected in isolated chicken stereocilia but Vo and KHAs are not detected (implying that KHAs must be in the membrane). The new model proposed in the present paper could lead to important changes in our understanding of sensory physiology.

Audiovisual crossmodal correspondences in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs)

The label ‘crossmodal correspondences’ has been used to define the nonarbitrary associations that appear to exist between different basic physical stimulus attributes in different sensory modalities. For instance, it has been consistently shown in the neurotypical population that higher pitched sounds are more frequently matched with visual patterns which are brighter, smaller, and sharper than those associated to lower pitched sounds. Some evidence suggests that patients with ASDs tend not to show this crossmodal preferential association pattern (e.g., curvilinear shapes and labial/lingual consonants vs. rectilinear shapes and plosive consonants). In the present study, we compared the performance of children with ASDs (6–15 years) and matched neurotypical controls in a non-verbal crossmodal correspondence task. The participants were asked to indicate which of two bouncing visual patterns was making a centrally located sound. In intermixed trials, the visual patterns varied in either size, surface brightness, or shape, whereas the sound varied in pitch. The results showed that, whereas the neurotypical controls reliably matched the higher pitched sound to a smaller and brighter visual pattern, the performance of participants with ASDs was at chance level. In the condition where the visual patterns differed in shape, no inter-group difference was observed. Children’s matching performance cannot be attributed to intensity matching or difficulties in understanding the instructions, which were controlled. These data suggest that the tendency to associate congruent visual and auditory features vary as a function of the presence of ASDs, possibly pointing to poorer capabilities to integrate auditory and visual inputs in this population.

Cross-Modality Correspondence between Pitch and Spatial Location Modulates Attentional Orienting

The brain constantly integrates incoming signals across the senses to form a cohesive view of the world. Most studies on multisensory integration concern the roles of spatial and temporal parameters. However, recent findings suggest cross-modal correspondences (eg high-pitched sounds associated with bright, small objects located high up) also affect multisensory integration. Here, we focus on the association between auditory pitch and spatial location. Surprisingly little is known about the cognitive and perceptual roots of this phenomenon, despite its long use in ergonomic design. In a series of experiments, we explore how this cross-modal mapping affects the allocation of attention with an attentional cuing paradigm. Our results demonstrate that high and low tones induce attention shifts to upper or lower locations, depending on pitch height. Furthermore, this pitch-induced cuing effect is susceptible to contextual manipulations and volitional control. These findings suggest the cross-modal interaction between pitch and location originates from an attentional level rather than from response mapping alone. The flexible contextual mapping between pitch and location, as well as its susceptibility to top-down control, suggests the pitch-induced cuing effect is primarily mediated by cognitive processes after initial sensory encoding and occurs at a relatively late stage of voluntary attention orienting.

Visuoauditory mappings between high luminance and high pitch are shared by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans

Humans share implicit preferences for certain cross-sensory combinations; for example, they consistently associate higher-pitched sounds with lighter colors, smaller size, and spikier shapes. In the condition of synesthesia, people may experience such cross-modal correspondences to a perceptual degree (e.g., literally seeing sounds). So far, no study has addressed the question whether nonhuman animals share cross-modal correspondences as well. To establish the evolutionary origins of cross-modal mappings, we tested whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) also associate higher pitch with higher luminance. Thirty-three humans and six chimpanzees were required to classify black and white squares according to their color while hearing irrelevant background sounds that were either high-pitched or low-pitched. Both species performed better when the background sound was congruent (high-pitched for white, low-pitched for black) than when it was incongruent (low-pitched for white, high-pitched for black). An inherent tendency to pair high pitch with high luminance hence evolved before the human lineage split from that of chimpanzees. Rather than being a culturally learned or a linguistic phenomenon, this mapping constitutes a basic feature of the primate sensory system.

Equivalent circuit modeling and vibrometry analysis of the Udu Utar Nigerian drum

The udu drum is both an aerophone and an idiophone played with both of the musician's hands. It originates from Nigeria where it began as a functional water pot made out of fired clay. At some point, a side hole was cut into the pot and it became a musical instrument, traditionally played by women, which had an important role in religious ceremonies. The udu is capable of producing deep tones that result from acoustic resonances similar to those of Helmholtz resonators, though with a second hole. It also may produce higher pitch sounds that result from the musician tapping the surface of the udu. This paper will discuss one-dimensional equivalent circuit modeling of the acoustic resonances of the udu. A comparison of the resonance frequencies in the equivalent circuit modeling to measured resonance frequencies will be given. Additionally, an analysis of the structural modes of the udu as measured by a scanning laser vibrometer will be given, along with some insights into the sound produced by striking the...

Crossmodal Correspondences

In many everyday situations, our senses are bombarded by numerous different unisensory signals at any given time. In order to gain the most veridical, and least variable, estimate of environmental stimuli/properties, we need to combine the individual noisy unisensory perceptual estimates that refer to the same object, while keeping those estimates belonging to different objects or events separate. How, though, does the brain ‘know’ which stimuli to combine? Traditionally, researchers interested in the crossmodal binding problem have focused on the role that spatial and temporal factors play in modulating multisensory integration. However, crossmodal correspondences between various unisensory features (such as between auditory pitch and visual size) may provide yet another important means of constraining the crossmodal binding problem. A large body of research now shows that people exhibit consistent crossmodal correspondences between many stimulus features in different sensory modalities. So, for example, people will consistently match high-pitched sounds with small, bright objects that are located high up in space. In this talk, the latest literature is reviewed. We will argue that crossmodal correspondences need to be considered alongside semantic and spatiotemporal congruency, among the key constraints that help our brains to solve the crossmodal binding problem. Crossmodal correspondences will also be distinguished from synaesthesia.

Músculo tiroaritenoideo e som basal: uma revisão de literatura

O trabalho do fonoaudiólogo utiliza-se de exercícios vocais como o som basal (SB), que se origina da grande atividade contrátil do músculo laríngeo intrínseco tiroaritenoideo (TA). O objetivo deste estudo foi revisar a literatura relacionada ao TA e ao SB. Realizou-se levantamento bibliográfico dos últimos 20 anos sobre o assunto nas bases de dados LILACS, SciELO, PubMed, Web of Science e Google Scholar. Verificou-se que o feixe interno do TA apresenta fibras de contração lenta, isotônicas, resistentes à fadiga; o feixe externo apresenta fibras de contração rápida, fatigáveis, isométricas. O SB caracteriza-se pela percepção dos pulsos de vibração glótica durante a emissão nas frequências mais graves da tessitura vocal (crepitação em graves ou vocal fry), principalmente pela ação do TA, especialmente sua porção interna, que se encurta de forma evidente, soltando a mucosa em grande volume ao longo da borda livre, aumentando a pressão subglótica e os níveis de jitter, shimmer e ruído, e reduzindo o fluxo aéreo. Com base na literatura, a exercitação isométrica do TA externo ocorreria com o SB sustentado na frequência mais grave possível ao sujeito (contração máxima), durante seis segundos, de cinco a dez vezes diárias, compatível com o predomínio de fibras de contração rápida. Na exercitação isotônica do TA interno, utilizar-se-iam sons agudos para estirá-lo, alternando emissões em SB (contração concêntrica) e em registro modal de cabeça ou em falsete (sons hiperagudos) (contração excêntrica), com várias séries diárias de oito a 12 repetições, compatível com o predomínio de fibras de contração lenta.