Estimation of Spectral Amplitude Measures in Healthy Aged Individuals

Abstract

Introduction: The anatomical and physiological changes in the phonatory system due to aging have a major impact on voice. Widely researched parameters of voice like fundamental frequency and the perturbation measures have strong correlation with age. However, these measures depend on the location of the exact pitch pulses and it may yield unreliable results in case of a severely aperiodic voice. Also, harmonic measures of voice in healthy aging are scanty in the literature. Aim: The present study focused on determining the changes in harmonic-related measures in healthy aging individuals using spectral amplitude measures. Materials and methods: The participants were classified into three groups as young, middle-aged, and elderly adults based on their age. All the participants were required to sustain three different types of vowels. Voice samples were analyzed using CSL software to obtain the spectral amplitude measures. Results: This showed that there was a decrease in spectral amplitude measures with aging. Discussion: Thus, suggesting that the harmonic structure of voice is not affected in healthy aged individuals. Vowel type and gender also influences the harmonic-related measures in the healthy aging population. Conclusion: The results of the present study could be used by the voice clinicians while assessing adults with voice disorders. It will also help the clinicians in delineating the age and gender differences in the vocal parameters.