OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS An intact epithelium is an important part of vocal fold defense. Damage to the epithelium can compromise vocal fold homeostasis and protection of the host tissue from viral and bacterial invasion. Elucidating the effects of damage on epithelial architectural and barrier integrity provides insight into the role of epithelium in protecting vocal folds. Using an animal model,...

A growing body of contemporary research has investigated differences between trained and untrained singing voices. However, few studies have separated untrained singers into those who do and do not express abilities related to singing talent, including accurate pitch control and production of a pleasant timbre (voice quality). This investigation studied measures of the singing power ratio (SPR)...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS Examination of tissue structures by optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been shown to be useful on mucous membranes of the vocal folds, but so far its application to the human larynx has been limited because it is technically cumbersome and usually needs to be performed with sedation. Here a newly developed, noninvasive combined laryngoscopy and OCT procedure is describ...

Vocal fold paralysis (VFP) refers to neurological causes of reduced or absent movement of one or both vocal folds. Bilateral VFP (BVFP) is characterized by inspiratory dyspnea due to narrowing of the airway at the glottic level with both vocal folds assuming a paramedian position. The primary objective of intervention for BVFP is to relieve patients' dyspnea. Common clinical options for managem...

Mammals are able to distinguish conspecifics based on vocal cues, and the acoustic structure of mammal vocalizations is directly affected by the anatomy and action of the vocal apparatus. However, most studies investigating individual patterns in acoustic signals do not consider a vocal production-based perspective. In this study, we used the source-filter model of vocal production as a basis f...

The relation between mother-infant coordinated interpersonal timing, an automated microanalytic measure of dyadic vocal coordination, and maternal sensitivity was explored. Thirty-five mothers and their developmentally normal 4-month-old infants were audio-recorded during a 20-min laboratory vocal interaction session, that was later analyzed for degree of vocal coordination. Maternal Sensitivit...

The influence of the thyroarytenoid (TA) and cricothyroid (CT) muscle activation on vocal fold stiffness and eigenfrequencies was investigated in a muscularly controlled continuum model of the vocal folds. Unlike the general understanding that vocal fold fundamental frequency was determined by vocal fold tension, this study showed that vocal fold eigenfrequencies were primarily determined by vo...

The purpose of this prospective study was to perform the Brazilian Voice-Related Quality of Life (V-RQOL) version and to check its psychometric measurement properties and the relationship between vocal self-assessment and the instrument's scores. The translation and validation were performed following the guidelines of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Medical Outcomes Trust. The instrument ...

Timbre can be defined as feature of an auditory stimulus that allows us to distinguish the sounds which have the same pitch and loudness. In this paper, we explore timbre based perceptual feature for singer identification. We start with a vocal detection process to extract the vocal segments from the sound. The cepstral coefficients, which reflect timbre characteristics, are then computed from ...

This report describes some preliminary attributes of stimuli developed for future evaluation of nonverbal emotion in neurological populations with acquired communication impairments. Facial and vocal exemplars of six target emotions were elicited from four male and four female encoders and then prejudged by 10 young decoders to establish the category membership of each item at an acceptable con...