NCT04713033

Computational Cranial and Cervical Muscle Network in Normal and Disordered Voice

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 14 (actual)
• Sponsor: NYU Langone Health · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 88 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The long-term goal is to transform the diagnosis and treatment of dysphonia by elucidating cervical and cranial neuromuscular mechanisms underlying typical and disordered voicing. The overall objective of this application is to propose and evaluate a novel objective spectrotemporal diagnostic tool measuring functional cervical-cranial muscle network activity in typical and disordered speakers.The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of how the vocal tract and the muscles of the larynx and the head work at baseline and after vocal fatigue.

Detailed description

Three experiments will be conducted over the 2-year award period. Experiment 1 (Aim 1) will utilize a 16-channel EMG array to characterize cervical-cranial muscle activity networks in typical speakers at baseline and after a vocal loading task. Aim 2 will quantify how cervical muscle networks are perturbed in patients with two different types of dysphonia and examine if standard-of-care treatment restores cervical-cranial muscle networks to more typical states. In Experiment 2 (Aim 2), we will measure muscle networks in patients with muscle tension dysphonia before and after a course of voice therapy. Patients with muscle tension dysphonia represent an intact butpotentially maladaptive network. In Experiment 3 (Aim 2), we will measure patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis, representing a neurologically impaired network, before and after a vocal fold injection medialization procedure.

Conditions

• Dysphonia

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DIAGNOSTIC_TEST	surface electromyogram (sEMG)	A device that measures electrical signals from your skin will be connected to those stickers and will make a graph that is characteristic to your vocal function.
DIAGNOSTIC_TEST	flexible laryngoscopy	A device that examines the throat and nasal passages. The flexible laryngoscope or "scope" consists of an eyepiece and a fiber-optic light enclosed in a thin, flexible tube. The scope looks like a strand of black spaghetti with a tiny light on the end of it. The scope is inserted through the nose, and can be moved around to help the doctor see all areas of the nasal passages and throat.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-09-09
• Primary completion: 2022-05-25
• Completion: 2022-05-25
• First posted: 2021-01-19
• Last updated: 2025-05-01

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States