That is why it hurts my ears...

Talking about laryngeal tissue, imagine this...

My 2 year old when she is upset, will screetch. Well, it hurts my ears. Anyway, the otherday I pulled out my laptop and the real time spectrogram to entertain her. So, she was jabbering and making lots of pretty spectrograms. Well, she screetched and I quickly saved it. Attached is the picture. She hit nearly 2500 Hz for a fundamental frequency. Amazing... That is why it hurts my ears.

So how high in pitch can a person phonate? At least 2500 Hz if done right (and very young as well).

Boucher, Ahmarani, & Ayad, 2006 Laryngoscope

Paper: V. J. Boucher, C. Ahmarani, and T. Ayad. Physiologic features of vocal fatigue: electromyographic spectral-compression in laryngeal muscles. Laryngoscope 116 (6):959-965, 2006. (note: I am going to start putting corresponding author's emails as found in the manuscripts)

Link to PubMed and abstract: PMID 16735908

First Commented on May 15, 2008

Overall Feeling: This is a nice cross over study using muscle fatigue knowledge as applied to laryngeal muscle fatigue. The protocol represents a significant amount of work that would be taxing to carry out (and to participate in). The study, and others like this, are needed.

Simply, they measured the muscle activity (EMG) of one of the vocal fold posturing muscles (the LCA) every 12-15 minutes throughout a day. Each measurement session was followed a 3 minutes loud (controlled) reading task.

First Comment: They took the time to use a nice sound level meter but never tell us about the room where recording took place. Was it an isolation booth? Low noise? Why did they spend so much time on the SLM and measures if they didn't tell us about the acoustics? This is just a minor comment.

Second Comment: I don't believe that this study could be done in the United States. Having worked with Institutional Review Boards, I don't believe that one would have thought the risk associated with that much EMG time (duration!- 12-14 hours of wires in my neck?) would be worth understanding vocal fatigue better (maybe vocal function as the larynx plays a necessary role in airway protection). The long term placement of electrodes, phsycological issues with all day placement, or potential drifting of electrodes with vibration from vocalization may cause additional damage or trauma and could eventually negatively effect the production of voice and the coordination of the system. While I hope the results are true (as they seem to be useful), I have a nagging thought that it might be induced by the all-day EMG electrodes...

Third Comment: Hind sight from a different lab is 20/20. Why did they choose 3 minute reading tasks at 12-15 minute intervals? Their goal was 50 but would 12 minute intervals result in an earlier occurrence of fatigue than 15 minute intervals? With slow fatiguing muscles of the larynx, would the extra 3 minutes make a difference? I would bet it would, effectively adding variability to their results. Also, they don't say why they chose that duration and interval. 3 minutes 50 times is 2.5 hours of speaking (speech accumulation time), similar to the time vocal loading of teachers found in other studies. That was a perfect setup that the authors missed in justifying why they chose it.



Possibly more later...

Voice Therapy Efficacy hardly exists

So I checked my email this morning and had the email that the image above is from:

Subject: Voice Therapy Resources -- Forthcoming and Bestselling

Just so you know before you buy anything, just type "efficacy" and "voice" in Google. Guess how many efficacious voice therapies there are? 1! UNO! ONE! ...and it is for persons with Parkinson's disease! So does that mean one shouldn't trust a vocologist and not get voice therapy? No, I am just saying, why should I buy a new book about techniques that have been out for years but have not been shown yet to be Efficacious?

Journal Fishing

Ok, I need to set this one up. I want to coin a new phrase... Journal Fishing

Main Entry: jour·nal
Pronunciation: \ˈjər-nəl\
Function: noun
Definition [one of the definitions]
a periodical dealing especially with matters of current interest

Main Entry: fishing
Function: transitive verb
Definition [one of the definitions]
to engage in a search by groping or feeling


MY NEW DEFINITION
Main Entry: jour·nal fishing
Pronunciation: \ˈjər-nəl\ \ˈfi-shiŋ\
Definition [my definition]
to engage in a search for a journal to submit a previously rejected manuscript


Commentary:
I recently was asked to review an article from a journal that I had not heard of before. As I started reading the article, I recognized it as similar to one I had reviewed a year or so ago that I had reviewed as needing major revisions (I also gave several issues that needed to be addressed). Well, the more I read, the more it was not only similar but was identical. When I did a 'compare documents', the main difference was the abstract. The authors didn't even attempt to address any of the issues I had. They, instead, just went Journal Fishing. Even more sad is that the corresponding author is an upstanding and well known researcher in the field.

Junk Science and the Scientific Method

I recently ran across this website:
JunkScience.com, All the Junk That's Fit to Debunk

I highly recommend their short course. If you are looking for a good synopsis of the scientific method, they have a nice subsection on it.

Agree with the site or not, I do believe that too many people publishing articles have forgotten some of the basics discussed. It should be required reading for anyone doing research or writing about research.

Help from the craziest places

I am going to add a new line of posts (well, we will see how long I keep it up), that is one of technology I use. My thought is that when I find a cool technology that works in laryngeal research or in the technology I use in my work, I will post up a link.

My laptop, which is about 2 years old, recently had the left 'SHIFT' key start acting odd. It still works but it just doesn't pop up the same. As I use it a lot, it has become quite annoying. I tried the cleaning the keyboard technique of compressed air hoping it was just a piece of dirt or something but that didn't work. Anyway, I got on line and found this great site for fixing laptop keyboards:
http://www.iraqigeek.com/
specifically this next link which talks about repairing laptop keyboards:
http://www.iraqigeek.com/?p=45

That is it. Fix your own keyboard.

Page Charges for Peer Review?

I was just part of a paper that was accepted by a journal that charges the authors a page charge. I actually wasn't aware that such a policy existed until we received a bill for the paper. Here is their (The American Physiological Society) policy:

Page Charges
To recover part of publication costs, the APS charges authors of research articles $70 per printed page. By signing the Mandatory Submission Form, the author agrees to pay page charges once his/her paper is published. (Forms customized to your manuscript will become available on completion of the submission process; check the Home Page of the journal you are submitting to for blank forms.)

Now, while there is nothing illegal about this, I believe it is highly unethical. Let's analyze this. If I submit an article to this society, they have volunteer peer reviewers that review it for scientific merit -- no cost there. If my article is accepted, I 'Pay' the journal to defray publication costs. But then the Journal turns around and charges libraries and others to view the published articles. Why do I need to pay for something to get printed then others pay to view it. This sounds like double-dipping to me. Because the Journal makes money from my article, maybe they should pay me if the reviewers accept the paper? Should I send them a bill for manuscript preparation costs?

I just think that this could be interpreted as non-peer-reviewed as authors are basically paying $1000 to this group to publish a paper.