Introduction: Patients with muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) suffer from several physical discomforts in their vocal tract. However, few studies have examined the effects of voice therapy (VT) on the vocal tract discomfort (VTD) in patients with voice disorders. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of VT on the VTD in patients with MTD.
Materials And Methods: This study was carried out on 25 subjects with MTD, including 5 men and 20 women, with the mean age of 37.20±5.70 years. The participants underwent 10 consecutive sessions of VT twice a week. The acoustic voice analysis, auditory-perceptual assessment, and the Persian version of the vocal tract discomfort (VTDp) scale were used to compare the pre- and post-treatment results.
Results: After VT, significant improvements were observed in the acoustic characteristics, including jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (P<0.05). Regarding the auditory-perceptual assessment, a significant reduction was noticed in the overall severity, roughness, and breathiness (P<0.05). Moreover, VT led to a significant reduction in all the items of the VTDp, including burn, tightness, dryness, pain, tickling, soreness, irritability, and lump in the throat, after VT in both frequency and severity sections of the VTDp scale (P<0.05).
Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that VT can be effective in reducing the frequency and severity of the VTD in patients with MTD in addition to improving voice quality.
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J Voice
January 2025
Department of Surgery, Division of Otolaryngology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Electronic address:
Introduction: Straw phonation therapy, a form of semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) exercise, is commonly used to help treat various voice disorders. Although straw phonation therapy has been studied extensively for decades, the impact of straw depth on vocal function remains unexplored. This study aims to quantify the effects of various straw vocal tract insertion depths (VTID) into the vocal tract on common aerodynamic parameters such as phonation threshold pressure (PTP), phonation threshold flow (PTF), and phonation threshold power (PTW) in an ex vivo canine model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQ J Exp Psychol (Hove)
January 2025
Department of Otorhinolaryngology / Head and Neck Surgery, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
This study aims to provide a comprehensive picture of auditory emotion perception in cochlear implant (CI) users by (1) investigating emotion categorization in both vocal (pseud-ospeech) and musical domains, and (2) how individual differences in residual acoustic hearing, sensitivity to voice cues (voice pitch, vocal tract length), and quality of life (QoL) might be associated with vocal emotion perception, and, going a step further, also with musical emotion perception. In 28 adult CI users, with or without self-reported acoustic hearing, we showed that sensitivity (d') scores for emotion categorization varied largely across the participants, in line with previous research. However, within participants, the d' scores for vocal and musical emotion categorization were significantly correlated, indicating similar processing of auditory emotional cues across the pseudo-speech and music domains and robustness of the tests.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnn Anat
February 2025
Department of Morpho-Functional Sciences I, Faculty of Medicine, "Grigore T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi, Romania. Electronic address:
and Aims We conducted this research motivated by the incomplete knowledge of the changes made by resonance and harmonic filtering processes made by articulatory gestures in the supralar-yngeal level of the vocal tract. Aim of research The goal of the study is to evaluate the adaptive changes taking place at the oropharyngeal isthmus during sustained phonation. Methods We focused on exploring the dynamics of the oropharyngeal pavilion in voice professionals using Cone-Beam Computed Tomogra-phy (CBCT).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Voice
January 2025
Utah Center for Vocology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; National Center for Voice and Speech, Salt Lake City, UT. Electronic address:
Objectives: Acoustic and aerodynamic powers in infant cry are not scaled downward with body size or vocal tract size. The objective here was to show that high lung pressures and impedance matching are used to produce power levels comparable to those in adults.
Study Design And Methodology: A computational model was used to obtain power distributions along the infant airway.
J Speech Lang Hear Res
January 2025
Center for Speech and Language Sciences, Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium.
Purpose: The aim was to determine and compare the short-term effects of two intensive semi-occluded vocal tract (SOVT) programs, "straw phonation" (SP) and "resonant voice therapy" (RVT), on the phonation of children with vocal fold nodules.
Method: A pretest-posttest randomized controlled study design was used. Thirty children aged 6-12 years were randomly assigned to the SP group ( = 11), RVT group ( = 11), or control group receiving indirect treatment ( = 8) for their voice problems.
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