We describe the psychophysical features of vocal amusia in a professional tango singer caused by an infarction mainly involving the superior temporal cortex of the right hemisphere. The lesion also extended to the supramarginal gyrus, the posterior aspect of the postcentral gyrus and the posterior insula. She presented with impairment of musical perception that was especially pronounced in disc...

Respiratory muscle strength training (RMST) focuses on increasing the force-generating capacity of the inspiratory and expiratory muscles. The choice of respiratory muscles that are targeted using RMST depends on the outcome desired. For example, if an individual has reduced inspiratory muscle strength due to a neurogenic injury and is unable to ventilate the lungs, then inspiratory muscle stre...

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine place-manner-voicing features and neuromuscular substrates of articulation and swallowing in a group of nursing home residents having concurrent dysarthria and dysphagia. Similar muscle groups function in speech articulation and swallowing, accounting for the high coincidence of dysarthria and dysphagia in neurological impairment. Subjects we...

Technologies capable of automatically sensing and recognizing emotion are becoming increasingly prevalent in performance and compositional practice. Though these technologies are complex and diverse, we present a typology that draws on similarities with computational systems for expressive music performance. This typology provides a framework to present results from the development of two audio...

The transmission protocol of voiced speech is hypothesized to be based on a fundamental excitation or drive process, which synchronizes the vocal tract excitation on the transmitter side and evokes the loudness and pitch perception on the receiver side. The fundamental drive can be extracted from the speech signal by using a voice-specific subband decomposition. When used as fundamental drive o...

The vowels of European languages are primarily distinguished by the two lowest resonance frequencies (R1 and R2) of the vocal tract. Once the pitch frequency fo exceeds the value of R1 in normal speech, sopranos can deliberately tune R1 to match fo. This can increase the loudness, uniformity of timbre and ease of singing, but with a reduction in intelligibility once R1 is varied from its value ...

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine place-manner-voicing features and neuromuscular substrates of articulation and swallowing in a group of nursing home residents having concurrent dysarthria and dysphagia. Similar muscle groups function in speech articulation and swallowing, accounting for the high coincidence of dysarthria and dysphagia in neurological impairment. Subjects we...

The "singer's formant" is a prominent spectrum envelope peak near 3 kHz, typically found in voiced sounds produced by classical operatic singers. According to previous research, it is mainly a resonatory phenomenon produced by a clustering of formants 3, 4, and 5. Its level relative to the first formant peak varies depending on vowel, vocal loudness, and other factors. Its dependence on vowel f...

Hypokinetic dysarthria is a common manifestation of Parkinson's disease, which negatively influences quality of life. Behavioral techniques that aim to improve speech intelligibility constitute the bulk of intervention strategies for this population, as the dysarthria does not often respond vigorously to medical interventions. Although several case and group studies generally support the effica...