Can we really ‘read’ art to see the changing brain? A review and empirical assessment of clinical case reports and published artworks for systematic evidence of quality and style changes linked to damage or neurodegenerative disease

The past three decades have seen multiple reports of people with neurodegenerative disorders, or other forms of changes in their brains, who also show putative changes in how they approach and produce visual art. Authors argue that these cases may provide a unique body of evidence, so-called ‘artistic signatures’ of neurodegenerative diseases, that might be used to understand disorders, provide diagnoses, be employed in treatment, create patterns of testable hypotheses for causative study, and also provide unique insight into the neurobiological linkages between the mind, brain, body, and the human penchant for art-making itself. However—before we can begin to meaningfully build from such emerging findings, much less formulate applications—not only is such evidence currently quite disparate and in need of systematic review, almost all case reports and artwork ratings are entirely subjective, based on authors' personal observations or a sparse collection of methods that may not best fit underlying research aims. This leads to the very real question of whether we might actually find patterns of systematic change if fit to a rigorous review—Can we really ‘read’ art to illuminate possible changes in the brain? How might we best approach this topic in future neuroscientific, clinical, and art-related research? This paper presents a review of this field and answer to these questions. We consider the current case reports for seven main disorders—Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia, corticobasal degeneration, aphasia, as well as stroke—consolidating arguments for factors and changes related to art-making and critiquing past methods. Taking the published artworks from these papers, we then conduct our own assessment, employing computerized and human-rater-based approaches, which we argue represent best practice to identify stylistic or creativity/quality changes. We suggest, indeed, some evidence for systematic patterns in art-making for specific disorders and also find that case authors showed rather high agreement with our own assessments. More important, through opening this topic and past evidence to a systematic review, we hope to open a discussion and provide a theoretical and empirical foundation for future application and research on the intersection of art-making and the neurotypical, the changed, and the artistic brain.     

普通话常规重音分布规则的研究

采用心理统计方法对中等规模语料库进行分析,探讨句法、韵律及其声学相关物之间的关系,根据汉语口语常规重音分布的规律,研究普通话常规重音分布规则及其在实际话语中应用的先后次序,最终建立适用于汉语文语转换系统的常规重音分布规则系统。     

Effects of Bilateral Subthalamic Nucleus Stimulation and Medication on Parkinsonian Speech Impairment

This study aimed to assess quantitatively the effect of bilateral subthalamic nucleus (STN) stimulation and medication on hypokinetic parkinsonian dysarthria. Twelve Italian patients (11 males and 1 female) with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (mean age 60.29+/-7.50 years) and bilateral STN implantation were studied. Neurological assessments and acoustic recordings were performed in four clinical conditions combining stimulation and medication to assess the degree of motor disabilities and speech impairment. Acoustic analysis was performed by means of the Multidimensional Voice Program and the Advanced Motor Speech Profile (Kay Elemetrics, Lincoln Park, NJ). None of the evaluated parameters deteriorated after STN deep brain stimulation. STN stimulation significantly improved motor performances and vocal tremor and provided a major stability to glottal vibration. Effect of stimulation on these parameters was superior to that of levodopa. No significant variations were observed in perceptual evaluation and in acoustic parameters related to prosody, articulation, and intensity after either stimulation or medication. The improvement of acoustic parameters related to glottal vibration and voice tremor was not accompanied by a substantial effect on speech intelligibility. STN stimulation was more effective on global motor limb dysfunctions than on dysarthria, but we did not report negative consequences on speech.     

一种改进的DNN-HMM的语音识别方法*

针对深度神经网络与隐马尔可夫模型(DNN-HMM)结合的声学模型在语音识别过程中建模能力有限等问题,提出了一种改进的DNN-HMM模型语音识别算法。首先根据深度置信网络(DBN)结合深度玻尔兹曼机(DBM),建立深度神经网络声学模型,然后提取梅尔频率倒谱系数(MFCC)和对数域的Mel滤波器组系数(Fbank)作为声学特征参数,通过TIMIT语音数据集进行实验。实验结果表明:结合了DBM的DNN-HMM模型相比DNN-HMM模型更具优势,其中,使用MFCC声学特征在词错误率与句错误率方面分别下降了1.26%和0.20%。此外,使用默认滤波器组的Fbank特征在词错误率与句错误率方面分别下降了0.48%和0.82%,并且适量增加滤波器组可以降低错误率。总之,研究取得句错误率与词错误率分别降低到21.06%和3.12%的好成绩。     

Multicontrast multiecho FLASH MRI for targeting the subthalamic nucleus

The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is one of the most common stimulation targets for treating Parkinson's disease using deep brain stimulation (DBS). This procedure requires precise placement of the stimulating electrode. Common practice of DBS implantation utilizes microelectrode recording to locate the sites with the correct electrical response after an initial location estimate based on a universal human brain atlas that is linearly scaled to the patient's anatomy as seen on the preoperative images. However, this often results in prolonged surgical time and possible surgical complications since the small-sized STN is difficult to visualize on conventional magnetic resonance (MR) images and its intersubject variability is not sufficiently considered in the atlas customization. This paper proposes a multicontrast, multiecho MR imaging (MRI) method that directly delineates the STN and other basal ganglia structures through five co-registered image contrasts (T1-weighted navigation image, R2 map, susceptibility-weighted imaging (phase, magnitude and fusion image)) obtained within a clinically acceptable time. The image protocol was optimized through both simulation and in vivo experiments to obtain the best image quality. Taking advantage of the multiple echoes and high readout bandwidths, no interimage registration is required since all images are produced in one acquisition, and image distortion and chemical shift are reduced. This MRI protocol is expected to mitigate some of the shortcomings of the state-of-the-art DBS implantation methods.     

Acoustic voice analysis in patients with Parkinson''s disease treated with dopaminergic drugs

To quantify several acoustic features of the voice in patients withParkinson's disease (PD), 41 patients and 28 age and sex-matched controls were studied. PD severity was assessed with the Unified PD Rating Scale (UPDRS) and the Hoehn and Yahr staging. The Computerized Speech Lab 4300 program (Kay Elemetrics) was used. Two seconds of a sustained /a/ and a sentence were captured with a microphone and laryngograph equipment. Measures included fundamental frequency (FO), frequency perturbation (fitter), intensity perturbation (shimmer), and harmonic/noise ratio (H/N) of the vowel /a/, and frequency and intensity variability of a sentence, phonational range, dynamic range at the natural frequency, maximum phonational time and s/z ratio. All subjects underwent indirect laryngoscopy and/or laryngeal fibroscopy. When compared with controls, PD patients showed higher jitter, lower H/N ratio, lower frequency and intensity variability of the sentence, and lower phonational range and reported a higher frequency of the presence of low voice-intensity, monopitch, voice arrests, and struggle. These features seem to be unaffected by the duration and severity of the disease.     

Single-channel speech enhancement method using reconstructive NMF with spectrotemporal speech presence probabilities

In this paper, a novel single microphone channel-based speech enhancement technique is presented. While most of the conventional nonnegative matrix factorization-based approaches focus on generating a basis matrix of speech and noise for enhancement, the proposed algorithm performs an additional process to reconstruct speech from noisy speech when these two elements are highly overlapped in selected spectral bands. This process involves a log-spectral amplitude based estimator, which provides the spectrotemporal speech presence probability to obtain a more accurate reconstruction. Moreover, the proposed algorithm applies an unsupervised learning method to the input noise, so it is adaptable to any type of environmental noise without a pre-trained dictionary. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm obtains improved speech enhancement performance compared with conventional single channel-based approaches.     

Acoustic Measures of Symptoms in Abductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

Speech of patients with abductor spasmodic dysphonia (ABSD) was analyzed using acoustic analyses to determine: (1) which acoustic measures differed from controls and were independent factors representing patients' voice control difficulties, and (2) whether acoustic measures related to blinded perceptual counts of the symptom frequency in the same patients. Patients' voice onset time for voiceless consonants in speech were significantly longer than the controls (p = 0.015). A principle components analysis identified three factors that accounted for 95% of the variance: the first factor included sentence and word duration, frequency shifts, and aperiodic instances; the second was phonatory breaks; and the third was voice onset time. Significant relationships with perceptual counts of symptoms were found for the measures of acoustic disruptions in sentences and sentence duration. Finally, a multiple regression demonstrated that the acoustic measures related well with the perceptual counts (r² = 0.84) with word duration most highly related and none of the other measures contributing once the effect of word duration was partialed out. The results indicate that some of the voice motor control deficits, namely aperiodicity, phonatory breaks, and frequency shifts, which occur in patients with ABSD, are similar to those previously found in adductor spasmodic dysphonia. Results also indicate that acoustic measures of intermittent disruptions in speech, voice onset time, and speech duration are closely related to the perception of symptom frequency in the disorder.     

Should Singing Activities Be Included in Speech and Voice Therapy for Prepubertal Children?

Customarily, speaking and singing have tended to be regarded as two completely separate sets of behaviors in clinical and educational settings. The treatment of speech and voice disorders has focused on the client's speaking ability, as this is perceived to be the main vocal behavior of concern. However, according to a broader voice-science perspective, given that the same vocal structure is used for speaking and singing, it may be possible to include singing in speech and voice therapy. In this article, a theoretical framework is proposed that indicates possible benefits from the inclusion of singing in such therapeutic settings. Based on a literature review, it is demonstrated theoretically why singing activities can potentially be exploited in the treatment of prepubertal children suffering from speech and voice disorders. Based on this theoretical framework, implications for further empirical research and practice are suggested.