Is There a Genetic Component to Tinnitus?

Tinnitus, the perception of sound in the absence of an external sound, emerges from a complex interaction between otologic health, general health/disease, and environmental stressors. Most people experience transient tinnitus at some point, but do genes play a role in susceptibility to chronic tinnitus?  As expected this is not an easy question to answer given the heterogeneity of tinnitus. 

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Ambulatory Voice Biofeedback: Relative Frequency and Summary Feedback Effects on Performance and Retention of Reduced Vocal Intensity in the Daily Lives of Participants With Normal Voices

Purpose

Ambulatory voice biofeedback has the potential to significantly improve voice therapy effectiveness by targeting carryover of desired behaviors outside the therapy session (i.e., retention). This study applies motor learning concepts (reduced frequency and delayed, summary feedback) that demonstrate increased retention to ambulatory voice monitoring for training nurses to talk softer during work hours.

Method

Forty-eight nurses with normal voices wore the Voice Health Monitor (Mehta, Zañartu, Feng, Cheyne, & Hillman, 2012) for 6 days: 3 baseline days, 1 biofeedback day, 1 short-term retention day, and 1 long-term retention day. Participants were block-randomized into 3 different biofeedback groups: 100%, 25%, and Summary. Performance was measured in terms of compliance time below a participant-specific vocal intensity threshold.

Results

All participants exhibited a significant increase in compliance time (Cohen's d = 4.5) during biofeedback days compared with baseline days. The Summary feedback group exhibited statistically smaller performance reduction during both short-term (d = 1.14) and long-term (d = 1.04) retention days compared with the 100% feedback group.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that modifications in feedback frequency and timing affect retention of a modified vocal behavior in daily life. Future work calls for studying the potential beneficial impact of ambulatory voice biofeedback in participants with behaviorally based voice disorders.

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Ambulatory Voice Biofeedback: Relative Frequency and Summary Feedback Effects on Performance and Retention of Reduced Vocal Intensity in the Daily Lives of Participants With Normal Voices

Purpose

Ambulatory voice biofeedback has the potential to significantly improve voice therapy effectiveness by targeting carryover of desired behaviors outside the therapy session (i.e., retention). This study applies motor learning concepts (reduced frequency and delayed, summary feedback) that demonstrate increased retention to ambulatory voice monitoring for training nurses to talk softer during work hours.

Method

Forty-eight nurses with normal voices wore the Voice Health Monitor (Mehta, Zañartu, Feng, Cheyne, & Hillman, 2012) for 6 days: 3 baseline days, 1 biofeedback day, 1 short-term retention day, and 1 long-term retention day. Participants were block-randomized into 3 different biofeedback groups: 100%, 25%, and Summary. Performance was measured in terms of compliance time below a participant-specific vocal intensity threshold.

Results

All participants exhibited a significant increase in compliance time (Cohen's d = 4.5) during biofeedback days compared with baseline days. The Summary feedback group exhibited statistically smaller performance reduction during both short-term (d = 1.14) and long-term (d = 1.04) retention days compared with the 100% feedback group.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that modifications in feedback frequency and timing affect retention of a modified vocal behavior in daily life. Future work calls for studying the potential beneficial impact of ambulatory voice biofeedback in participants with behaviorally based voice disorders.

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Ambulatory Voice Biofeedback: Relative Frequency and Summary Feedback Effects on Performance and Retention of Reduced Vocal Intensity in the Daily Lives of Participants With Normal Voices

Purpose

Ambulatory voice biofeedback has the potential to significantly improve voice therapy effectiveness by targeting carryover of desired behaviors outside the therapy session (i.e., retention). This study applies motor learning concepts (reduced frequency and delayed, summary feedback) that demonstrate increased retention to ambulatory voice monitoring for training nurses to talk softer during work hours.

Method

Forty-eight nurses with normal voices wore the Voice Health Monitor (Mehta, Zañartu, Feng, Cheyne, & Hillman, 2012) for 6 days: 3 baseline days, 1 biofeedback day, 1 short-term retention day, and 1 long-term retention day. Participants were block-randomized into 3 different biofeedback groups: 100%, 25%, and Summary. Performance was measured in terms of compliance time below a participant-specific vocal intensity threshold.

Results

All participants exhibited a significant increase in compliance time (Cohen's d = 4.5) during biofeedback days compared with baseline days. The Summary feedback group exhibited statistically smaller performance reduction during both short-term (d = 1.14) and long-term (d = 1.04) retention days compared with the 100% feedback group.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that modifications in feedback frequency and timing affect retention of a modified vocal behavior in daily life. Future work calls for studying the potential beneficial impact of ambulatory voice biofeedback in participants with behaviorally based voice disorders.

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Voice Quality Following Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis: A Randomized Comparison of Therapeutic Modalities

Publication date: Available online 21 March 2017
Source:Journal of Voice
Author(s): Sunali Vij, Ashok K. Gupta, Dharam Vir
In this work, a study on the efficacy of different therapeutic modalities in patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) was carried out. The study included 20 patients with UVFP, divided into two groups. The objective of this work is to evaluate the voice quality in these patients and to compare the voice following surgery and voice therapy. Group I received voice therapy and group II underwent thyroplasty type I and type IV. The voice was assessed pretreatment and 1 and 3 months posttreatment. Different parameters, such as habitual fundamental frequency (F0), signal-to-noise ratio, jitter, shimmer, maximum phonation duration, s/z ratio, and objective and subjective ratings of dysphonia, were analyzed. It was observed that in group I, all the parameters in seven out of ten patients improved significantly, except for shimmer. In group II, voice quality improved in 70% of the patients with all the parameters. As per previous studies, jitter and shimmer improved after a rehabilitation procedure. However, in this work, it is observed that shimmer did not improve in patients receiving voice therapy. The present study is the first of its type documenting and comparing the efficacy of voice therapy and thyroplasty type I and type IV in patients with UVFP.



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