مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تاثیر شاخص توده بدنی در شکل گیری ساختارهای گفتاری – NCBI 2018

Studies in the fields of voice and speech have increasingly focused on the vocal tract and on the importance of its structural integrity. The vocal tract plays a very important role in the formation of speech sounds, amplifying certain harmonic groups, dampening others, and concentrating the resonance of the sound waves in specific parts of the vocal tract, according to individual configuration.1 This results in a modification of the sound produced at the source, resulting in individual vocal characteristics. For this reason, changes in the anatomy and configuration of the vocal tract determine the variations in phonatory and acoustic measurements, especially in the formation of the formants, which, according to Camargo and Cukier, cited by Gusmão, Campos and Maya,2 corresponds to the following: formant 1 (F1), opening of the mouth and the vertical displacement of the tongue; formant 2 (F2), horizontal displacement of the tongue; and formant 3 (F3), anterior oral and pharyngeal cavities.2 There is an association between the length of the vocal tract and the average formant frequency; the longer the vocal tract, the lower the average formant frequency.1 This highlights the importance of understanding the factors that modify the vocal tract, and that may interfere in the quality of the voice and the precision of speech sounds. Recent studies have revealed the functional consequences arising from being overweight and having fat accumulated in the pharyngeal region, including obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS)3,4 and impacts on the voice.5–7 The accumulation of adipose tissue, in addition to reductions in the diameter of the pharyngeal region, causes an endocrine reaction that increases the levels of free fatty acids accumulated in the skeletal muscles, consequently reducing muscular strength8,9 and the articulatory precision of the structures responsible for speech.10,11 Since there are few studies in the literature on this topic, we aimed to assess the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and the analysis of the speech formants to verify if the BMI is an important factor in the integrity of the vocal tract, and if an increase in the BMI generates changes in formant patterns.