Speech Airflow and Air-Pressure Signal Editing Platform

Experimental phonetics development to today has undergone a long and complicated process. The field of study from the acoustic analysis of expansion to the physiological and perceptual field. Speech aerodynamics signal is one of the most important physiological signal language research, plays an important role in human phonation process. Air pressure signal as an important physiological signal, which has great significance to the study of speech physiology, mainly through speech aerodynamics equipment acquisition. In this paper, according to the need of research, established by MATLAB program analysis platform, can be edited on the speech, the airflow and pressure signal is better, which is more suitable for speech research.

Speech Aerodynamics Parameter Extraction Platform

The speech aerodynamics signal is one of the most important physiological signal in language research, plays an important role in human phonation process. Recently, there are a lot of equipment for speech aerodynamics signal research, mainly used in the field of medical research. But the supporting software can't satisfy the need of phonetics research. In this paper, according to the need of phonetics research, through the analysis of signal to KAYPENTAX speech aerodynamic devices, and used the MATLAB programming to establish the analysis platform to extracting parameters. The platform can read the NSP format file and output relevant parameters.

Effects of Pallidal Stimulation on Speech in Three Men With Severe Parkinson’s Disease

This project examined the effects of pallidal stimulation and medication on speech in three men with severe Parkinson’s disease. Two participants had bilateral pallidal stimulation and one had unilateral stimulation contralateral to a prior pallidotomy. Measures included general motor function, auditory perceptual characteristics of speech, intelligibility, inter-pause speech rate, and speech aerodynamics. All three participants had improved motor function (better mobility, reduced tremor and dyskinesia), but responses for speech varied widely. The participant with a prior unilateral pallidotomy and contralateral pallidal stimulation had alleviation of painful facial-mandibular dystonia so that he was more willing and better able to talk. One participant developed marked hypophonia postoperatively from a presumed pallidotomy or chronic stimulation effect as this result was not altered by deactivating the bilateral stimulators. The third participant dεmonstrated improved overall speech characterized by reduced vocal strain and tremulousness in the medication-on condition when the stimulators were activated. In the medication-of condition, he developed abnormal speech dysfluencies with bilateral pallidal stimulation, but this impairment was eliminated with medication or when the stimulators were deactivated. Careful exploration of speech sequelae after pallidal stimulation is essential to develop risk/benefit data for future neurosurgical candidates.