Vocal Control and Vocal Well-Being

The WG is part of the department's clinical and research focuses on stress, trauma sequelae, and dissociative disorders.

The VoCoWell Lab focuses on how individuals differ in their vocal control and vocal behavior as a function of stressor exposure and personality and the resulting implications for risk for voice disorders. The research will help to determine what constitutes vocal resilience and how to improve vocal well-being. Research methods encompass basic and clinical voice science and psychophysiological and neuroimaging methods. In addition to studying vocal control in vocally healthy individuals, the VoCoWell Lab is interested in patients with functional dysphonia and aphonia, primary muscle tension dysphonia, and occupational voice users such as teachers and student teachers. The research program aims to contribute to an evidence-based biopsychosocial model of risk for voice disorders that informs innovative screening, prevention, and treatment approaches.

Studies

• Neurobiological and psychobiological signatures of vocal effort in early career teachers
• Emotion regulation in functional dysphonia and aphonia
• Classifying neck surface EMG signals for the early detection of vocal fatigue in student teachers
• Classification of voice and speech signals for the detection of psychiatric disorders

Funding

• National Institutes on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

Team

• Director: Dr. Maria Dietrich
• Postdoc: Dr. Mark Berardi
  Dr. Mark Berardi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Vocal Control and Vocal Well-Being Lab (VoCoWell Lab) under the supervision of Dr. Maria Dietrich in the department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at University Hospital Bonn (UKB) in Germany. He started his academic and researcher career working in acoustical physics with applications in music, speech, and architectural acoustics. He then completed a PhD at Michigan State University in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Dr. Berardi's research at MSU centered around developing models for aging voice, vocal effort related to communication demands, and vocal fatigue. Now at UKB, his research continues with a focus on the neurobiological and psychological factors associated with vocal fatigue in school teachers. He also collaborates with researchers at UKB applying speech science to psychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder and schizophrenia. An additional emphasis of his research is the development of computational tools to conduct voice disorder research on a large scale to leverage data science methodologies towards more precise and personalized therapeutic care. His long-term research goal is to combine his diverse background in acoustics, computation, and neurobiology towards a better understanding of speech and voice disorders.
   
• Medical doctoral student:
  • Katrin Blum, cand. med.
• Student and research assistants:
  • Jeannine Bussjäger, MSc
  • Simon Draber, MSc
  • Dana Hurtenbach
  • Benjamin Rehring, MSc
  • Anna Zhukova
• former members:
  • Burcu Gelin, MSc
  • Juliane von der Heyde, MSc
  • Hannah Moser, MSc

Open positions

Please send us a mail if you want to join our team:

Collaborations

• Sektion für Phoniatrie und Pädaudiologie, Klinik und Poliklinik für Hals-Nasen-Ohren-Heilkunde, UKB
  • Dr. Dr. Peggy Herrmann
• AG Translationale Bildgebung in der Psychiatrie, UKB
  • Prof. Dr. Axel Krug
• Vision Guided and Intelligent Robotics Lab (ViGIR Lab), Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Missouri
  • Guilherme DeSouza, Associate Professor
  • Yixiang Gao, doctoral student