Primary muscle tension dysphonia voice disorder with symptoms of vocal strain and vocal fatigue is common and can have a significant negative impact on quality of Life. Yet, primary muscle tension dysphonia's causes are unknown precluding precise diagnostic classification. Stress and personality are thought to play a role and thus, the project aims to determine the practical and clinical effect of stress on the control of voice and speech in the brain. Participants are female early career teachers and student teachers with symptoms of vocal fatigue, as well as control participants without vocal fatigue, who perform speech tasks on two different occasions. Neural (imaging of brain), psychobiological (saliva, personality), and voice and speech (muscle activity of voice muscles on the neck with surface sensors, audio recordings) data will compare reactivity patterns of teachers who are stressresponders with those who are nonresponders as well as control participants. The central hypothesis is that voice box stress responders have heightened emotion-motor activations involving the emotional voice production pathway, which correlate with changes in voice muscle activity in the anterior neck. The results will provide fundamentally missing data in our understanding of the role of stress in vocal complaints and will yield new insights about the neural underpinnings of primary muscle tension dysphonia. The study findings will have a significant impact on how clinicians identify so-called laryngoresponders to help them prevent voice disorders.
Age range
21 Years – 39 Years
Sex
FEMALE
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Vocal fatigue
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
BOLD MRI area 4p
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Salivary cortisol
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Suprahyoid muscle activity
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Infrahyoid muscle activity
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Personality, Social Potency
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Personality, Stress Reaction
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month
Personality, social anxiety
Timeframe: through study completion, an average of 1 month