Voice Fatigue

A healthy voice is essential for meeting professional and communicative demands, particularly for professional voice users such as academics, who are at increased risk of voice disorders due to prolonged and intensive voice use, unfavorable acoustic conditions, and stress. Voice disorders often result from inadequate respiratory support, leading to compensatory laryngeal overuse, vocal fatigue, and deterioration in voice quality. Although traditional voice therapy emphasizes diaphragmatic breathing, it does not enhance respiratory capacity because it lacks resistance. This study aims to investigate the effects of resistance-based breathing exercises using the Expiratory Muscle Strength Trainer (EMST 150) and triflo devices on respiratory capacity, acoustic and aerodynamic voice parameters, and vocal fatigue in academics. The findings are expected to contribute to the literature and support the use of EMST as a preventive and therapeutic approach for occupational groups at risk of voice disorders.

Primary muscle tension dysphonia voice disorder with symptoms of vocal strain and vocal fatigue is common and can have a significant negative impact on quality of Life. Yet, primary muscle tension dysphonia's causes are unknown precluding precise diagnostic classification. Stress and personality are thought to play a role and thus, the project aims to determine the practical and clinical effect of stress on the control of voice and speech in the brain. Participants are female early career teachers and student teachers with symptoms of vocal fatigue, as well as control participants without vocal fatigue, who perform speech tasks on two different occasions. Neural (imaging of brain), psychobiological (saliva, personality), and voice and speech (muscle activity of voice muscles on the neck with surface sensors, audio recordings) data will compare reactivity patterns of teachers who are stressresponders with those who are nonresponders as well as control participants. The central hypothesis is that voice box stress responders have heightened emotion-motor activations involving the emotional voice production pathway, which correlate with changes in voice muscle activity in the anterior neck. The results will provide fundamentally missing data in our understanding of the role of stress in vocal complaints and will yield new insights about the neural underpinnings of primary muscle tension dysphonia. The study findings will have a significant impact on how clinicians identify so-called laryngoresponders to help them prevent voice disorders.