HRS

Course: Voice, Speech and Hearing

Department/Abbreviation: KBF/HRS

Year: 2020

Guarantee: 'doc. RNDr. Jan Švec, Ph.D.'

Annotation: Basic knowledge on the topic of voice and speech production in humans and on human hearing.

Course review:
- Voice, speech, hearing and quality of life, basic terminology, control system for voice production, evolution of speech, animals imitating human speech - Human anatomy: Basic terminology, protective laryngeal function, physical-acoustical analogy of voice production system - Anatomy and physiology of breathing for voice and speech production, upper and lower airways, ribcage, chest vs. abdominal cavity in breathing, breathing muscles - Spirometry - basic parameters, air volume during breathing and speech, lung pressure, relaxation pressure curve, keeping constant lung pressure during phonation - Acoustics of voice and speech: types of sounds (waveforms and spectra), fundamental period and frequency, principles of Fourier synthesis and Fourier analysis - Voice and speech production: Voice source. Source-filter theory. Influence of source and filter on voice - Resonance of vocal tract cavities: Formants, vowels; vocal tract shape and tongue position in vowels, Hellwag's triangle. Acoustic vowel synthesis - Voice: Anatomy and physiology. Laryngoscopic structure of larynx. Phonation vs. respiration. Cartilaginous skeleton of larynx. - External and internal laryngeal muscles, depressors and elevators, adductors and abductors, muscles controlling vocal fold tension. Cartilaginous versus membranous glottis. Laryngeal innervation - Layered vocal fold structure and simplified schemes. Elastic properties of the layers. Vocal fold frequency control (length, active and passive tension) - Recording of voice and speech: Microphones, dynamic and frequency range. Preamplifier, analog-digital converter (sampling frequency, bit resolution). Cables and connectors, audiofiles. - Objective and subjective properties of sound: pitch height, volume and timbre - Fundamental frequency of voice: (fo) vs. pitch, fo in regular and irregular voices, sound spectrography and fo, voice perturbation (jitter and shimmer), 3 types of signals - Acoustic pressure, intensity and energy. Sound pressure level SPL, sound intensity level SIL. SPL versus distance. SPL calibration. Sound level meter and its setup - Basic methods for voice examination and analysis. Sound spectrography. Voice range profile. Electroglottography. Photoglottography. Pneumotachography. Direct and indirect measurement of subglottal pressure. Laryngoscopy - Clinical examination and measurement of voice disorders: questionnaires (Voice Handicap Index VHI), perceptual evaluation, acoustic and physiologic measures, special diagnostic methods - Voice disorders (functional and organic), basics of their treatment. Selected organic disorders: inflammation, reflux, nodules, polyps, papillomatosis, Reinke's edema, innervation disorders, vocal fold cancer. Principles of voice hygiene - Speech: phones versus phonemes, International phonetic alphabet, phonetic transcription, vowels vs. consonants, consonant articulation, acoustic analysis of speech - Hearing: basics of psychoacoustics, Fechner-Weber law. Hearing threshold, hearing field. Loundess levels and equal loudnes contours, phons - Anatomy and properties of hearing organ: outer, middle and inner ear, sound distortion in hearing apparatus, organ of Corti and its function - Theories of hearing, Helmholtz, Bekesy, passive and active mechanism of place coding, inner and outer hair cells, their function and importance - Temporal coding in cochlea: sound representation in auditory nerve, phase locking, sound source localization, intensity coding, simulation of cochlear function - Energy and information flow in the hearing organ. Air and bone conduction - Methods of hearing examination. Hearing impairments types. Subjective and objective hearing tests: pitch forks, audiogram, tympanometry, reflexometry, otoacoustic emissions, BERA (ABR) - Correction of hearing impairments: Hearing aids and their differentiation. Clinical indications for allocating hearing aids. Cochlear implants