PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES & NEURAL MECHANISMS OF THE INFANT CRY & VOCALIZATION

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This project currently focuses on gender differences in primate vocal communication in adulthood and during development, on the role of individual experience in the acquisition of adult vocal skills, and on the development of computer-based algorithms for acoustic parameter extraction and analysis. Major findings this year were: 1. The vocalizations of aged humans suffering from various forms of dementia are characteristic of dementia subtype. Analysis of acoustic structural details indicates that the vocalizations of subjects diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, vascular dementia and dementia of unknown origin are distinctive, such that a discriminant function analysis correctly predicts dementia subtype in about 90% of cases. 2. The vocalizations of developing rhesus macaques recorded during brief periods of social separation are individually distinctive from the newborn period and, with maturation, become more stereotyped and converge in a subset of acoustic parameters. However, other acoustic parameters remain distinctive for the individual vocalizer over this same period.