About Our Lab:
The oral and pharyngeal cavities making up the vocal tract undergo changes in size, shape, and relative proportions during the growth process from infancy through early childhood and adolescence. While acoustic theory indicates that vocal geometry is predictive of the spectrum shape of speech sounds, the relation between developmental changes in the vocal tract to changes in speech acoustics has not been adequately investigated. This is due to the scarcity of quantitative information on the anatomic remodeling of the vocal tract during development. The goal of this project is to gain a detailed understanding of the postnatal macroanatomic three dimensional (3D) development of the vocal tract structures in typically developing individuals and in individuals with atypical speech development due to chromosomal aberrations, such as Trisomy 21.

During the past 4 years, we have developed a head and neck Magnetic Resonance Imaging database (327 typically and atypically developing cases) and using our established procedures (Vorperian, et al., 1999) we are making a predefined set of measurements on 51 structures and have started developing a unique database of measurements that will permit us to assess the concurrent development of the head, face and vocal tract structures. Please visit our
Poster Presentations page for some of our current findings.

In the next phase of this project, we combine imaging, acoustic analysis, and geometric modeling in our ongoing investigation on the development of the vocal tract from infancy through adulthood. Our goals are to:
 
  1. Expand the scope of our developmental database by: a) incorporating CT images in our image database, which is currently based only on MR images; b) securing a comprehensive set of 2D and a select set of 3D measurements of vocal tract structures, thus expanding our measurement database; and c) incorporating the speech acoustics representative of the specified vocal tract anatomy in our database by securing a speech sample from a subset of patients/subjects who are to be imaged.
     
  2. Statistically model general trends in the individual and synchronous growth patterns of the vocal tract structures.
     
  3. Configure geometric models of the developing vocal tract and compute formant frequencies; and correlate computed formant values with age specific acoustic data to make inferences regarding developmental patterns of articulator mobility.


These goals will be addressed through our MR imaging database that spans the entire developmental period of typically and atypically developing cases, and a similar computerized tomography (CT) image database that we are now securing. The findings will be of theoretical and clinical significance for an improved understanding of the anatomic correlates of speech development.

This research is supported by grants R03 DC4362 and R01 DC 006282 from the National Institute of Health - National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders (NIH-NIDCD).
 

 

 
updated 4/27/2006 (Reid Durtschi) 
  © Waisman Center 2006

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