Meeting Abstract
Our voice is used to communicate but also defines our identity. Thus, a voice alteration can cause emotional and social issues. Patients suffering from an advanced stage of laryngeal cancer often have to undergo a total surgical removal of the larynx, which is the human voice source. To recover the ability to speak, a prosthesis, mimicking the vocal folds, is usually placed between the trachea and the oesophagus. The exhaled air crosses a vibrating element and produces a substitute voice. Unfortunately, the created voice is of poor quality: it is weak, with a low pitch and sounds mechanical. In addition, the limited lifetime of the devices, due to biofilm coming from mucus/material interactions, forces a frequent device replacement. To date, there is no voice prosthesis lasting more than 3 months and able to reconstruct a natural-sounding human voice. In this context, birds should attract attention. First, their vocal repertoire is incredibly diverse, with pitch spanning from 100 to 12 000 Hz, compared to only 85 to 255 Hz in human speech. Moreover, their unique vocal organ, the syrinx, produces sounds from the vibration of membranes, located in the wall of the syrinx, meaning that the air is flowing through the vocal tract without crossing any structures, unlike in mammals. By quantifying the 3D motions of the vocal system during sound production and modulation, we will build a predictive aero-acoustic model we can use to ask “what if” questions and understand cause-effect relationships between shape, motions, and produced sounds. Our interdisciplinary approach, integrating biology, physics and computer science will provide fundamental principles we want to apply to the design of a new generation of vocal prostheses that will produce voices that are more humane.
