Relationship between Psychological Stress Determined by Voice Analysis and Periodontal Status: A Cohort Study

In modern society, evaluation and management of psychological stress may be important for the prevention of periodontal disease. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between psychological stress (vitality and mental activity) evaluated by Mind Monitoring System (MIMOSYS) and periodontal status. Forty students of Okayama University underwent the oral examination and self-reported questionnaire on the first day (baseline) and the 14th day (follow-up). Voice recording was performed every day with the MIMOSYS app during the whole study period. The participants completed the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-9 and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) at baseline and at follow-up. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to determine the significance of correlations among variables. The PHQ-9 and BDI scores were negatively correlated with vitality in the morning. Change in vitality in the morning was significantly correlated with changes in periodontal inflammation. Mental activity was significantly correlated with change in mean probing pocket depth. This result shows that measurement of psychological stress using a voice-based tool to assess mental health may contribute to the early detection of periodontal disease

CLASSIFICATION OF BIPOLAR DISORDER, MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER, AND HEALTHY STATE USING VOICE

Objective: In this study, we propose a voice index to identify healthy individuals, patients with bipolar disorder, and patients with major depressive disorder using polytomous logistic regression analysis.Methods: Voice features were extracted from voices of healthy individuals and patients with mental disease. Polytomous logistic regression analysis was performed for some voice features.Results: With the prediction model obtained using the analysis, we identified subject groups and were able to classify subjects into three groups with 90.79% accuracy.Conclusion: These results show that the proposed index may be used as a new evaluation index to identify depression

Adaptation to ischemia with special emphasis on nitric oxide

Nitric oxide (NO) may play an essential role for maintenance of cardiac function and perfusion. Endothelial dysfunction of atherosclerotic vessels may aggravate cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury. Adaptation to ischemia may be induced by short episodes of ischemia and reperfusion before sustained ischemia, which may be performed on the heart itself or another organ to protect the heart. NO has been suggested to be a signal molecule initiating this adaptation, while inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) has been suggested as a mediator of delayed preconditioning of the heart. The protection afforded by preconditioning may potentially be associated with changes of vessel tone. Most investigations of the role of cardiac nitric oxide and ischemic preconditioning in ischemia/reperfusion injury has been conducted in animals with normal vessels. With the development of recombinant DNA technology, animal models of atherosclerosis have emerged. One of these models is the apolipoprotein E and LDL receptor double knockout (ApoE/LDLr KO) mouse, which develops atherosclerosis with a distribution pattern of lesions similar to humans. In the present studies, we demonstrate endothelial dysfunction in ApoE/LDLrKO mice and that the tolerance of their hearts to ischemia was decreased (Langendorff model). A NO donor attenuated the decreased ischemic tolerance of ApoE/LDLrKO mice hearts, while the same concentration of the donor was detrimental in normal hearts, probably due to NO-overproduction and peroxynitrate formation. We also demonstrated several kinds of adaptation to ischemia by preconditioning. Classic ischemic preconditioning could protect not only normal mice hearts bit also atherosclerotic mice hearts. Exposure to hyperoxia exerted a similar protection as ischemic preconditioning in atherosclerotic mice. Spontaneous heart infarctions in vivo adapted the heart of atherosclerotic mice to induced ischemia ex vivo analogous to delayed ischemic preconditioning. Spontaneous ischemic events in the brain also protected the hearts of atherosclerotic mice, and this effect could be mimicked by inducing brain ischemia by bilateral internal carotid artery ligation in normal mice. Spontaneous and induced brain ischemia attenuated vessel contractility in vitro, increased vessel dilatation, and upregulated iNOS in the vessel wall as well as in the heart. Pharmacological and genetical inhibition of iNOS abolished the protective effects and changed vessel reactivity. These findings suggest that delayed ischemic preconditioning effects evoked by brain ischemia may mediated by iNOS. The present study indicates that patients with coronary atherosclerosis may benefit from treatment with NO-enhancing agents or preconditioning techniques. The organ protection is generated by ischemia rather than by ischemia and reperfusion and may mediated by iNOS

Distinguish the Severity of Illness Associated with Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection via Sustained Vowel Speech Features

The authors are currently conducting research on methods to estimate psychiatric and neurological disorders from a voice by focusing on the features of speech. It is empirically known that numerous psychosomatic symptoms appear in voice biomarkers; in this study, we examined the effectiveness of distinguishing changes in the symptoms associated with novel coronavirus infection using speech features. Multiple speech features were extracted from the voice recordings, and, as a countermeasure against overfitting, we selected features using statistical analysis and feature selection methods utilizing pseudo data and built and verified machine learning algorithm models using LightGBM. Applying 5-fold cross-validation, and using three types of sustained vowel sounds of /Ah/, /Eh/, and /Uh/, we achieved a high performance (accuracy and AUC) of over 88% in distinguishing “asymptomatic or mild illness (symptoms)” and “moderate illness 1 (symptoms)”. Accordingly, the results suggest that the proposed index using voice (speech features) can likely be used in distinguishing the symptoms associated with novel coronavirus infection

A validation study of a consumer wearable sleep tracker compared to a portable EEG system in naturalistic conditions

Objective: To compare a wearable device, the Fitbit Versa (FV), to a validated portable single-channel EEG system across multiple nights in a naturalistic environment. Methods: Twenty participants (10 men and 10 women) aged 25–67 years were recruited for the present study. Study duration was 14 days during which participants were asked to wear the FV daily and nightly. The study intended to reproduce free-living conditions; thus, no guidelines for sleep or activity were imposed on the participants. A total of 138 person-nights, equivalent to 76,539 epochs, were used in the validation process. Sleep measures were compared between the FV and portable EEG using Bland-Altman plots, paired t-tests and epoch-by-epoch (EBE) analyses. Results: The FV showed no significant bias with the EEG for the global sleep measures time in bed (TIB) and total sleep time (TST), and for calculated sleep efficiency (cSE = [TST/TIB] x 100). The FV had 92.1% sensitivity, 54.1% specificity, and 88.5% accuracy with a Cohen's kappa of 0.41, but a prevalence- and bias adjusted kappa of 0.77. The predictive values for sleep (PVS; positive predictive value) and wakefulness (PVW; negative predictive value) were 95.0% and 42.0%, respectively. The FV showed significant bias compared to the portable EEG for time spent in specific sleep stages, for SE as provided by FV, for sleep onset latency, sleep period time, and wake after sleep onset. Conclusions: The consumer sleep tracker could be a useful tool for measuring sleep duration in longitudinal epidemiologic naturalistic studies albeit with some limitations in specificity

Association Between Electroencephalogram-Derived Sleep Measures and the Change of Emotional Status Analyzed Using Voice Patterns : Observational Pilot Study

BACKGROUND: Measuring emotional status objectively is challenging, but voice pattern analysis has been reported to be useful in the study of emotion.OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the association between specific sleep measures and the change of emotional status based on voice patterns measured before and after nighttime sleep.METHODS: A total of 20 volunteers were recruited. Their objective sleep measures were obtained using a portable single-channel electroencephalogram system, and their emotional status was assessed using MIMOSYS, a smartphone app analyzing voice patterns. The study analyzed 73 sleep episodes from 18 participants for the association between the change of emotional status following nighttime sleep (Δvitality) and specific sleep measures.RESULTS: A significant association was identified between total sleep time and Δvitality (regression coefficient: 0.036, P=.008). A significant inverse association was also found between sleep onset latency and Δvitality (regression coefficient: -0.026, P=.001). There was no significant association between Δvitality and sleep efficiency or number of awakenings.CONCLUSIONS: Total sleep time and sleep onset latency are significantly associated with Δvitality, which indicates a change of emotional status following nighttime sleep. This is the first study to report the association between the emotional status assessed using voice pattern and specific sleep measures