Voice pitch is negatively associated with sociosexual behavior in males but not in females.

Acoustic cues play a major role in social interactions in many animal species. In addition to the semantic contents of human speech, voice attributes - e.g.

Reading and lexical-semantic retrieval tasks outperforms single task speech analysis in the screening of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

Age-related cognitive impairment have increased dramatically in recent years, which has risen the interes in developing screening tools for mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Speech analysis allows to exploit the behavioral consequences of cognitive deficits on the patient's vocal performance so that it is possible to identify pathologies affecting speech production such as dementia. Previous studies have further shown that the speech task used determines how the speech parameters are altered.

Speech biomarkers of risk factors for vascular dementia in people with mild cognitive impairment.

Introduction: In this study we intend to use speech analysis to analyze the cognitive impairments caused by pathologies of vascular origin such as diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and heart disease, predictors of the development of vascular dementia.

Methods: In this study, 40 participants with mild cognitive impairment were asked to read while being recorded and they were inquired about their history of the aforementioned conditions. Their speech was then analyzed.

Vocal Cues to Male Physical Formidability.

Animal vocalizations convey important information about the emitter, including sex, age, biological quality, and emotional state. Early on, Darwin proposed that sex differences in auditory signals and vocalizations were driven by sexual selection mechanisms. In humans, studies on the association between male voice attributes and physical formidability have thus far reported mixed results.

Many Changes in Speech through Aging Are Actually a Consequence of Cognitive Changes.

Background: During aging, changes in human speech may arise because of the neurophysiological deterioration associated with age, or as the result of an impairment in the cognitive processes underlying speech production. Some speech parameters show specific alterations under the presence of dementia. The objective of our study is to identify which of these parameters change because of age, cognitive state, or the interaction of both.

Reading Competency, Speech Rate and Rhythm.

Background: There is increasing evidence defining reading competency in terms of accuracy, speed and prosody, as well as interest in gaining better understanding of the interrelation as a function of prosodic features. This study aims to analyze the relationship between reading competency, in terms of accuracy and speed of written word recognition, and two attributes related to prosody in oral reading of texts: speech rate and rhythm.

Method: Oral reading of a narrative text by 141 third and fourth grade Spanish-speaking students was analyzed using an automated acoustic speech procedure and their reading competency was assessed.

Ten Years of Research on Automatic Voice and Speech Analysis of People With Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Systematic Review Article.

The field of voice and speech analysis has become increasingly popular over the last 10 years, and articles on its use in detecting neurodegenerative diseases have proliferated. Many studies have identified characteristic speech features that can be used to draw an accurate distinction between healthy aging among older people and those with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Speech analysis has been singled out as a cost-effective and reliable method for detecting the presence of both conditions.

Changes in the Rhythm of Speech Difference between People with Nondegenerative Mild Cognitive Impairment and with Preclinical Dementia.

This study explores several speech parameters related to mild cognitive impairment, as well as those that might be flagging the presence of an underlying neurodegenerative process. Speech is an excellent biomarker because it is not invasive and, what is more, its analysis is rapid and economical. Our aim has been to ascertain whether the typical speech patterns of people with Alzheimer's disease are also present during the disorder's preclinical stages.

A Prototype for the Voice Analysis Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Speech variations enable us to map the performance of cognitive processes of syntactic, semantic, phonological, and articulatory planning and execution. Speaking is one of the first functions to be affected by neurodegenerative complaints such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), which makes the speech a highly promising biomarker for detecting the illness before the first preclinical symptoms appear.

Objective: This paper has sought to develop and validate a technological prototype that adopts an automated approach to speech analysis among older people.

Relations between Sensorimotor Integration and Speech Disorders in Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Sensorimotor integration mechanisms can be affected by many factors, among which are those involving neuromuscular disorders. Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by well-known motor symptoms, among which lately have been included motor speech deficits. Measurement of the acoustic startle reflex (ASR) and its modulations (prepulse inhibition and prepulse facilitation, PPI and PPF respectively) represent a simple and quantifiable tool to assess sensorimotor function.

Voice Markers of Lexical Access in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Recent studies have identified the correlation between dementia and certain vocal features, such as voice and speech changes. Vocal features may act as early markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Despite being present in non-pathological senescence and Mild Cognitive Impairment, especially in its amnesic subtype (aMCI), these voice- and speech-related symptoms are the first signs of AD.

Speech rhythm alterations in Spanish-speaking individuals with Alzheimer's disease.

Rhythm is the speech property related to the temporal organization of sounds. Considerable evidence is now available for suggesting that dementia of Alzheimer's type is associated with impairments in speech rhythm. The aim of this study is to assess the use of an automatic computerized system for measuring speech rhythm characteristics in an oral reading task performed by 45 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) compared with those same characteristics among 82 healthy older adults without a diagnosis of dementia, and matched by age, sex and cultural background.

Ethics, Science and Mind Control: J. M. Rodríguez-Delgado's Legacy.

This work analyses the evolution of the scientific visibility of the neurophysiologist José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado. It examines the longitudinal evolution from 1955 to 2013 of an article (Delgado, Roberts, & Miller, 1954) studying the neurological basis of learning and motivation and compares it with a coetaneous article (Olds & Milner, 1954) with a similar subject and methodology. Both studies have been essential in Psychology.

Can the Acoustic Analysis of Expressive Prosody Discriminate Schizophrenia?

Emotional states, attitudes and intentions are often conveyed by modulations in the tone of voice. Impaired recognition of emotions from a tone of voice (receptive prosody) has been described as characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia. However, the ability to express non-verbal information in speech (expressive prosody) has been understudied.

Humor styles and personality: A meta-analysis of the relation between humor styles and the Big Five personality traits.

This research summarizes the knowledge generated in social psychology and positive psychology about the relationship between humor styles, personality and wellbeing. Specifically, a meta-analysis was performed with the results of 15 studies on humor styles measured by the Humor Styles Questionnaire (Martin, Puhlik-Doris, Larsen, Gray & Weir, 2003) in correlation with the personality traits measured by the Big Five Personality model (measured with different scales). Following the steps presented by Rosenthal (1991) for meta-analysis in the case of correlational research, we calculated the total mean r as an indicator of effect size.

Speech in Alzheimer's disease: can temporal and acoustic parameters discriminate dementia?

Aims: The study explores how speech measures may be linked to language profiles in participants with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and how these profiles could distinguish AD from changes associated with normal aging.

Methods: We analysed simple sentences spoken by older adults with and without AD. Spectrographic analysis of temporal and acoustic characteristics was carried out using the Praat software.

Beliefs about the effects of social sharing of emotion in alexithymia.

Background: Emotional events are followed by recurrent talking about the event (Social Sharing of Emotion, SSE). Several factors that can account for variations in beliefs about SSE were examined: alexithymia, age and sex among two sample groups, Spanish (n = 388) and Uruguayan (n = 537).

Method: Both samples completed the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Beliefs about Social Sharing of Emotion Questionnaire (BSEQ).

Infant crying: pattern of weeping, recognition of emotion and affective reactions in observers.

This study has three objectives: a) to describe the main differences in the crying patterns produced by the three affective states most closely related to crying: fear, anger and pain; b) to study the adults' accuracy in the recognition of the affective states related to the infant's crying, and c) to analyze the emotional reaction that infant crying elicits in the observers. Results reveal that the main differences appear in the ocular activity and in the pattern of weeping. The infants maintain their eyes open during the crying produced by fear and anger, but in the case of crying provoked by painful stimuli, the eyes remain closed almost all the time.

Acoustic markers associated with impairment in language processing in Alzheimer's Disease.

This study broaches in a novel way the analysis of cognitive impairment characteristic of the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Specifically, we attempt to determine the acoustic speech parameters that are sensitive to the onset of the disease, and their association with the language deficit characteristic of AD. Speech analysis was carried out on 21 elderly patients with AD using Praat software, which analyzes the acoustic components of speech.

[Measurement of Affect Regulation Styles (MARS) expanded].

An expanded Spanish version of the Measure of Affect Regulation Styles (MARS), was applied to episodes of anger and sadness, in a sample of 355 graduate students from Chile, Spain, and Mexico. The study examines the association between affective regulation, adaptation to episodes and dispositional coping and emotional regulation, and psychological well-being. With regard to perceived improvement of adaptive goals, the following adaptive affect regulation strategies were confirmed: Instrumental coping, seeking social support, positive reappraisal, distraction, rumination, self-comfort, self-control, and emotional expression were functional; whereas inhibition and suppression were dysfunctional.

[Expressive prosodic patterns in individuals with Alzheimer's disease].

This paper describes a useful technique for quantifying the degree of speech deficits in dementia of GDS 4 Alzheimer's type (DAT). Production of prosodic speech in DAT patients and healthy older controls was analysed using variation in fundamental frequency (F0) measures on a reading task. The prosogram computational model was used to analyze the prosodic contours of the speech samples, using melodic styling of F0 based on perceptual principles and prominence detection of spectral and amplitude fluctuations in the speech signal.

[Influence of clinical status in the relationship between alexithymia and emotional recognition: a dimensional study].

The results of this study are part of an investigation to determine whether the cognitive-emotional process of emotional recognition is deficient as a function of the clinical condition and alexithymia in subjects with somatization. This investigation applied the self-assessment of emotion and used a procedure that minimizes the use of verbal skills and verbal comprehension. The specific goal of this study was to verify whether there were differences in the covariation between alexithymia and self-evaluation of the emotional reaction in clinical and nonclinical subjects.

[Alexithymia and experimentally induced emotion recognition in people with somatizations].

This study is part of an investigation aimed at assessing the cognitive-emotional process of emotional recognition in somatizing patients. The specific objective was to verify whether there were differences in the self-assessment of emotional reaction among patients with somatization and non-clinical controls. To obtain the self-assessment of their emotional reaction in the affective dimensions of valence and activation in clinical and control participants, we resorted to a procedure that minimizes the use of verbal skills and comprehension.

[Chondrocalcinosis and hypomagnesemia: clinical and radiological progression].

Hypomagnesemia is a rare secundary metabolic disorder associated with calcium pyrophosphate dihydrate cristal deposition disease in joint structures and may cause asymptomatic chondrocalcinosis (linear calcification of cartilage), pseudogout, and chronic arthropathy. We report 2 young men with relapsing acute knee monoarthritis with chondrocalcinosis and hypomagnesemia. After follow-up clinical and radiological events al least for 5 years and treatment with magnesium lactate, these patients have not shown new pseudogout attacks.