Innovative Speech Articulation Tools for Neuroscience Research

描述（由申请人提供）：许多生物医学疾病和影响语言神经控制的疾病可能伴随语音发音的变化。从历史上看，通过声学分析来测量这些变化要么需要费力的手工测量，要么需要计算机编程技能。作为先前工作成果的一部分，我们开发了基于声学标志的快速自动计算机程序，用于许多具体研究。这些程序大大简化了获取和分析语音生产数据的过程。在多次合作中，我们发现我们开发的方法可以在广泛分离的神经学领域产生重要而有用的结果。但是，迄今为止，这些程序的发展是根据个别项目的特殊需要进行的，并没有系统地处理外部用户的需要。为了响应pa08 -114，我们将把我们的程序库扩展成一个方便的软件工具，SpeechMark，供有或没有语音研究背景的科学家更广泛地使用。SpeechMark的模块将以具体措施菜单的形式呈现，并将以插件（“端口”）的形式提供给现有的分析软件工具

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Changes in speech articulation can accompany many biomedical disorders and conditions that affect neurological control of speech. Historically, measuring these changes by acoustic analysis has required either laborious hand measurement or computer programming skill. As part of the output of previous work, we have developed fast automatic computer procedures based on acoustic landmarks for a number of specific studies. These procedures considerably streamline the process of acquiring and analyzing speech production data. In multiple collaborations we have found that the method we have developed to produce these procedures yields significant and useful results in widely separated areas of neurological interest. However, development of these procedures has thus far proceeded in response to the particular needs of individual projects and has not systematically addressed the needs of outside users. In response to PA 08-114, we will expand our library of procedures into a convenient software tool, SpeechMark, for wider use by scientists with or without a background in speech research. SpeechMark's modules will be presented as a menu of specific measures and will be provided in the form of plug-ins ("ports") to existing analysis software tools such as WaveSurfer, the R statistical-analysis system, MATLAB, and Excel. They will offer summary statistics for the measures as well as for additional composite measures that we have found to be reliable indicators of the existence of speech differences between populations or conditions. Further, SpeechMark will be set up to report data from a single audio file, or groups of audio files in a standard table format, for easy input to statistical or other analysis software We plan to develop an organized methodology in, a common Software Development Kit (SDK) as a foundation for every SpeechMark port. This will enable us to maintain existing ports and develop new ones in response to the changing needs of the user community. As envisioned by PA 08-114, the availability of such tools will "jump-start" the use of speech production analysis across a wide range of neurologically important areas of research. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Changes in health status and speaking condition often affect the articulation of speech. Scientific investigation of these changes has been handicapped by lack of access to robust, user-friendly software tools for fast, automatic measurement of speech acoustics. The software development is aimed at making acoustic landmark-detection software, which is focused on articulation, available to a wider community of scientists in the form of add-ons to existing analysis software tools such as WaveSurfer, MATLAB, and Excel.