SARA (Socially-Aware Robot Assistant) is an embodied intelligent personal assistant that analyses the user’s visual (head and face movement), vocal (acoustic features) and verbal (conversational strategies) behaviours to estimate its rapport level with the user, and uses its own appropriate visual, vocal and verbal behaviors to achieve task and social goals. The presented agent aids conference ...

Tissue engineering has revealed the potential to regenerate injured vocal folds, and identification of the most suitable seed cells has remained a hot topic of research. The aim of this study was to implant fibroblast-like cells differentiated from adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADSCs) in a canine acute vocal fold wound model. We then sought to characterize changes in the extracellular...

Social factors play a key role in the structuring of vocal repertoires at the individual level, notably in non-human primates. Some authors suggested that, at the species level too, social life may have driven the evolution of communicative complexity, but this has rarely been empirically tested. Here, we use a comparative approach to address this issue. We investigated vocal variability, at bo...

Introduction: Use of patient-based voice assessment scales is an appropriate method that is frequently used to demonstrate effectiveness of voice therapy. This study was aimed at determining the effectiveness ofvoice therapy among patients with secondary muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) and vocal mass lesions.   Materials and Methods: The study design was prospective, with within-participant repe...

Background & Aims: Previous studies have indicated significant differences in vocal parameters between children with Down syndrome and normal children, but there are challenges about these differences. In this study vocal parameters and Maximum Phonation Time (MPT) in adults with Down syndrome have been investigated. Method: This cross-sectional and analytic study was performed on 22 adults wit...

The success of a speaker identification system depends largely on the set of features used to characterize speaker-specific information. In this paper, we discuss a small set of low-level acoustic parameters that capture information about the speaker’s source, vocal tract size and vocal tract shape. We demonstrate that the set of eight acoustic parameters has comparable performance to the stand...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Vocal fold stellate cells (VFSCs) in the human maculae flavae located at both ends of the vocal fold mucosa are inferred to be involved in the metabolism of extracellular matrices of the vocal fold mucosa. Tension caused by phonation (vocal fold vibration) likely regulates the behavior of the VFSCs in the human maculae flava. Tensile and compressive strains have direct eff...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Adipose derived stromal cells (ASCs) are abundant and easy to prepare. Such cells may be useful for treating severe vocal disturbance caused by acute vocal fold scars. STUDY DESIGN Prospective animal experiments with controls. METHODS Twenty New-Zealand white rabbits were used in the present study. We evaluated vocal fold healing, with or without injection of autologou...

the speech is an easily accessible signal which clearly represents the characteristics of larynx and vocal folds. therefore, application of some proper machine learning algorithms on a small part of a recorded speech signal may help in non-invasive diagnosing of vocal fold diseases. since there are some experimental evidences that suggest the existence of chaotic behavior in speech production s...

While several studies have investigated mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) emitted by isolated pups or by males in mating contexts, studies of behavioral contexts other than mating and vocalization categories other than USVs have been limited. By improving our understanding of the vocalizations emitted by mice across behavioral contexts, we will better understand the natural vocal behavior o...