Vocal Effort and Acoustic Analysis of Gargle Phonation Versus Water Swallow in Patients With Muscle Tension Dysphonia: A Clinical Trial.

Purpose: To determine the effects of gargle phonation (GP) on self-perceived vocal improvement, vocal effort, acoustic parameters, and speech rate in patients with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD). We hypothesized that GP would improve voice, reduce phonatory effort, and alter acoustic and speech measures.

Study Design: Prospective randomized, single-blind cross-over clinical trial METHODS: Thirty-four participants (26 females, 8 males; average age 53 years) who were diagnosed with MTD completed the Voice Handicap Index-10 (VHI-10) and were assigned three study conditions: Baseline (B), GP, and Water Swallow (WS; sham), presented in one of two counterbalanced orders B-WS-GP (WS) or B-GP-WS (GP).

Landmark-based analysis of speech differentiates conversational from clear speech in speakers with muscle tension dysphonia.

This study evaluated the feasibility of differentiating conversational and clear speech produced by individuals with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) using landmark-based analysis of speech (LMBAS). Thirty-four adult speakers with MTD recorded conversational and clear speech, with 27 of them able to produce clear speech. The recordings of these individuals were analyzed with the open-source LMBAS program, SpeechMark®, matlab Toolbox version 1.

Analyzing acoustic and prosodic fluctuations in free speech to predict psychosis onset in high-risk youths.

The diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders depends on the analysis of behavior through language by a clinical specialist. This analysis is subjective in nature and could benefit from automated, objective acoustic and linguistic processing methods. This integrated approach would convey a richer representation of patient speech, particularly for expression of emotion.

SPEECH MARKERS FOR CLINICAL ASSESSMENT OF COCAINE USERS.

One of the main foci of addiction research is the delineation of markers that track the propensity of relapse. Speech analysis can provide an unbiased assessment that can be deployed outside the lab, enabling objective measurements and relapse susceptibility tracking. This work is the first attempt to study unscripted speech markers in cocaine users.

Analyzing progression of motor and speech impairment in ALS.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease which causes death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles. It is currently assessed with subjective clinical measurements, but it would benefit from alternative surrogate biomarkers that can better estimate disease progression. This work analyzes speech and fine motor coordination of subjects recruited by the Answer ALS foundation using data from a mobile app.

Acoustic correlates for perceived effort levels in male and female acted voices.

The best actors, particularly classic Shakespearian actors, are experts at vocal expression. With prosodic inflection, change of voice quality, and non-textual utterances, they communicate emotion, emphasize ideas, create drama, and form a complementary language which works with the text to tell the story in the script. To begin to study selected elements of vocal expression in acted speech, corpora were curated from male actors' Hamlet and female actresses' Lady Macbeth soliloquy performances.