Current ProjectsÂ
Temporal coordination and discoordination during articulation
How are rhythm and stress encoded in global vocal tract modulation?
For my masters thesis, I examined how rhythm and stress are captured in periods of high movement of the vocal tract. These "modulation pulses" are highly regular, and neural activity may entrain with them during speech perception.
How do motor speech disorders differ from typical speech?
While perceptual accounts describe articulatory "discoordination" as a symptom of dysarthria (a motor speech disorder associated with multiple neurodegenerative diseases), little discoordination has been found. I am examining articulation of dysarthric speech using both traditional and novel approaches. I aim to align these methods with acoustic measurements so they can be used more easily in clinical settings.
How can machine learning algorithms distinguish disordered and typical speech articulation?
Using articulatory data from typical speakers and speakers with dysarthria caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), I am employing a long short-term memory system to classify disordered and typical speech based on articulatory patterns.
