This paper reports the results from an instrumental investigation into speaker specific strategies of stop voicing, devoicing and glottalisation in German. Laryngograph recordings were taken from eight German speakers producing /p, t, k/ and /b, d, ɡ/ preceded by vowels, nasals or /l/ and followed by nasals or /l/. Four of the subjects produced glottalised stops in some phonetic environments, t...

Although hydrocephalus associated with NF-1 is not rare, up to now the MR imaging findings in these patients and the role of ETV in the treatment of hydrocephalus associated with NF-1 have not been investigated thoroughly. We present the MR imaging findings of hydrocephalus associated with NF-1 in 7 of 54 patients with NF-1. Although the types of obstruction were various, including aqueductal w...

We have isolated four homologs of Engrailed genes from the Japanese lamprey, Lethenteron japonicum, an agnathan that occupies a critical phylogenic position between cephalochordates and gnathostomes. We named these four genes LjEngrailedA, LjEngrailedB, LjEngrailedC, and LjEngrailedD. LjEngrailedA, LjEngrailedB, and LjEngrailedD share a major expression domain in the presumptive midbrain-hindbr...

Objective: Velopharyngeal insufficiency is usually defined as failure of the velopharyngeal sphincter (mainly: velum, lateral and posterior pharyngeal walls) to separate the oropharynx from the nasopharyngeal space during speech and deglutition resulting in swallowing and speech difficulties with adverse effects on communication skills and the psychological status of the patient. Methods: We pr...

A 66-year-old male with a history of hypertension, back pain, diverticulosis and anal fistula presents with acute onset syncopal episodes, worsening back pain, and altered mental status. The patient exhibited considerable leukocytosis but was hemodynamically stable. CT imaging of the head revealed a gas pattern in the posterior fossa and velum interpositum. CT imaging of the abdomen and pelvis ...

Larval molluscs commonly use ciliated vela to swim and feed. In this study we used immunohistochemistry to demonstrate innervation of velar cilia and muscles by monoaminergic and peptidergic fibres in the caenogastropod, Ilyanassa obsoleta. Photoelectric recordings from pre-oral cilia on isolated pieces of velum revealed that serotonin increased, whereas catecholamines (dopamine and norepinephr...

This paper describes the processing of MRI and CT images needed for developing a 3D linear articulatory model of velum. The 3D surface that defines each organ constitutive of the vocal and nasal tracts is extracted from MRI and CT images recorded on a subject uttering a corpus of artificially sustained French vowels and consonants. First, the 2D contours of the organs have been manually extract...

A three-dimensional on-line visualization of the vocal tract during speech production was performed based on MRI data obtained from a female speaker producing the six Russian vowels. These images were collected using original method of 3D MRI-scanning where the starting moments of MRI processes enabled co-operative activities from a patient’s side via a special remote-control device. A strobosc...

Recently, we have proposed a new technique for facilitating the extraction of vocal tract contours from complete sequences of large existing cineradiographic databases. The articulators (tongue, tongue tip, velum, lips, etc.) are processed independently before being combined to reconstruct the whole vocal tract. Applied to one sequence of the ATR database, Laval43, the method allows us to estim...