Voice Characteristics in Smith–Magenis Syndrome: An Acoustic Study of Laryngeal Biomechanics

Abstract

Smith–Magenis syndrome (SMS) is a rare genetic disease characterized by intellectual disability, serious behavior disorders, neurodevelopment delay, and speech and language disorders. An acoustic and biomechanical analysis of the voice of SMS young adults was carried out due to (a) the close relationship between the laryngeal biomechanics and the clinical and emotional state of a person; (b) the fact that no research on the voice in this syndrome has been conducted previously. The vocal timbre of most people diagnosed with SMS does not seem to be according to the complexion of diagnosed individuals, nor to their gender and age, so it could be interesting to attend the analysis of phonation of people with a rare genetic syndrome such as SMS. We used BioMetPhon, a specific piece of software to analyze the glottal source and biomechanics of vocals folds. Nineteen features related to dysphonia, physiology, and biomechanics of the vocal folds were considered. The adult phonation of 9 individuals with SMS was analyzed and compared to 100 normative male and female adult voices. Results showed that the phonation of the SMS group significantly deviates from the adult normophonic profile in more than one of the 19 features examined, such as stiffness of the thyroarytenoid muscle and dynamic mass of the vocal fold cover, among others.