An MRI study of the articulatory properties of italian consonants

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) data have been collected for three male speakers of Italian producing sustained consonants in VCV-context (with V=/{i, a, u}/). For one speaker the resulting database consists of a midsagittal set of 42 Italian articulations (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) plus 9 dialectal sound configurations and 12 scans for specific nasal allophones. It is associated with vowels, jaw and teeth references and dental casts. A subset of images is also available, however, for a limited selection of articulations produced by two other control speakers. It has been collected in view of dialect studies and it includes midsagittal and coronal scans. As in previous partial publications of these data, the aim of the present paper is to discuss only place and manner of articulation in a descriptive framework.Los datos de MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) han sido reunidos a partir de consonantes sostenidas, emitidas por tres hablantes de italiano masculinos, en un contexto de VCV (donde V = /{i, a, u}/). Para cada emisor la base de datos resultante consta de un conjunto midsagital de 42 articulaciones en italiano (/p/, /f/, /tѕ/, /t/, /ѕ/, /∫/, /t∫/, /k/, /λ/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ y /ŋ/) junto con 9 configuraciones fónicas dialectales y 12 registros sobre ciertos alófonos nasales. Se asocia con vocales, tomando referencias dentales, maxilares y dentales. Dispone asimismo de un grupo de imágenes para una selección limitada de articulaciones producidas por dos hablantes controles. Todo ello está orientado hacia los estudios dialectales y comprende muestras midsagitales y coronales. Al igual que en publicaciones monográficas anteriores, la finalidad de este artículo consiste en analizar solo el lugar y el modo de articulación en un marco descriptivo

The weight of phonetic substance in the structure of sound inventories

In the research field initiated by Lindblom & Liljencrants in 1972, we illustrate the possibility of giving substance to phonology, predicting the structure of phonological systems with nonphonological principles, be they listener-oriented (perceptual contrast and stability) or speaker-oriented (articulatory contrast and economy). We proposed for vowel systems the Dispersion-Focalisation Theory (Schwartz et al., 1997b). With the DFT, we can predict vowel systems using two competing perceptual constraints weighted with two parameters, respectively λ and α. The first one aims at increasing auditory distances between vowel spectra (dispersion), the second one aims at increasing the perceptual salience of each spectrum through formant proximities (focalisation). We also introduced new variants based on research in physics - namely, phase space (λ,α) and polymorphism of a given phase, or superstructures in phonological organisations (Vallée et al., 1999) which allow us to generate 85.6% of 342 UPSID systems from 3- to 7-vowel qualities. No similar theory for consonants seems to exist yet. Therefore we present in detail a typology of consonants, and then suggest ways to explain plosive vs. fricative and voiceless vs. voiced consonants predominances by i) comparing them with language acquisition data at the babbling stage and looking at the capacity to acquire relatively different linguistic systems in relation with the main degrees of freedom of the articulators; ii) showing that the places “preferred” for each manner are at least partly conditioned by the morphological constraints that facilitate or complicate, make possible or impossible the needed articulatory gestures, e.g. the complexity of the articulatory control for voicing and the aerodynamics of fricatives. A rather strict coordination between the glottis and the oral constriction is needed to produce acceptable voiced fricatives (Mawass et al., 2000). We determine that the region where the combinations of Ag (glottal area) and Ac (constriction area) values results in a balance between the voice and noise components is indeed very narrow. We thus demonstrate that some of the main tendencies in the phonological vowel and consonant structures of the world’s languages can be explained partly by sensorimotor constraints, and argue that actually phonology can take part in a theory of Perception-for-Action-Control

Articulation in a bilingual speaker: Preliminary models and phonemic comparisons

International audienceMRI investigation of articulatory strategies of bilinguals-overall strategie

Articulation in a bilingual speaker: Preliminary models and phonemic comparisons

International audienceMRI investigation of articulatory strategies of bilinguals-overall strategie

Speaker adaptation of an acoustic-to-articulatory inversion model using cascaded Gaussian mixture regressions

International audienceThe article presents a method for adapting a GMM-based acoustic-articulatory inversion model trained on a reference speaker to another speaker. The goal is to estimate the articulatory trajectories in the geometrical space of a reference speaker from the speech audio signal of another speaker. This method is developed in the context of a system of visual biofeedback, aimed at pronunciation training. This system provides a speaker with visual information about his/her own articulation, via a 3D orofacial clone. In previous work, we proposed to use GMM-based voice conversion for speaker adaptation. Acoustic-articulatory mapping was achieved in 2 consecutive steps: 1) converting the spectral trajectories of the target speaker (i.e. the system user) into spectral trajectories of the reference speaker (voice conversion), and 2) estimating the most likely articulatory trajectories of the reference speaker from the converted spectral features (acoustic-articulatory inversion). In this work, we propose to combine these two steps into the same statistical mapping framework, by fusing multiple regressions based on trajectory GMM and maximum likelihood criterion (MLE). The proposed technique is compared to two standard speaker adaptation techniques based respectively on MAP and MLLR

Etude du rôle des lipases musculaires dans la régulation du métabolisme des lipides et de la sensibilité à l'insuline

Mon travail de thèse à été axé sur l'étude le la lipolyse musculaire. Nous avons notamment étudié son impact sur la sensibilité à l'insuline ainsi que sur la régulation du métabolisme lipidique et oxydatif. Nous avons pu montrer que l'expression musculaire de l'adipose triglycéride lipase (ATGL), enzyme limitante de la lipolyse, était corrélée négativement avec la sensibilité à l'insuline dans une cohorte de personnes de poids normal, obèses et diabétiques. Afin d'identifier l'impact de cette augmentation d'expression de l'ATGL musculaire nous avons surexprimé la protéine dans des myocytes primaires humains. La signalisation ainsi que la sensibilité à l'insuline étaient diminuées dans ces cellules. Nous avons pu établir que ceci passait par une augmentation de la production de diacylglycérols (DAG) et l'activation de protéines kinases C (PKC) connus pour phosphoryler négativement l'insulin receptor substrate 1. Pour compléter ce travail nous avons étudié dans un modèle murin soumis à un régime riche en graisse, s'il existait une détérioration de l'expression des lipases associée à la perte de sensibilité à l'insuline. Nous avons ainsi pu montrer que le régime hyper lipidique entrainait un déséquilibre de la lipolyse musculaire avec une augmentation de l'expression de comparative gene identification 58 (CGI-58) (co-activateur de l'ATGL) et une baisse de la phosphorylation activatrice de la lipase hormono-sensible en sérine 660. Ceci était associé à une augmentation de l'activation des PKC-? et -e et à une accumulation de DAG. En parallèle, nous avons étudié la fonction de CGI-58 dans le muscle squelettique. Pour cela nous avons réalisé des expériences de surexpression ou d'extinction de CGI-58 dans des myocytes. Nous avons montré que, comme dans l'adipocyte, CGI-58 était un co-activateur de l'ATGL dans le muscle squelettique. De façon intéressante, nous avons également observé que la diminution de la lipolyse, résultant de l'extinction de CGI-58, passait par une diminution de l'oxydation des lipides et une hausse de celle des glucides. Ces effets pourraient s'expliquer par la baisse de l'expression de la pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4. Cette baisse d'expression est du dans notre modèle à une diminution de l'activation de peroxysome proliferator-activated receptor bêta/d par les acides gras de la lipolyse. Ces travaux ont montré pour la première fois un lien causal entre une dérégulation de la lipolyse musculaire et l'insulino-résistance. Nos données participent également à l'élargissement des connaissances existantes sur le contrôle physiologique et moléculaire de la lipolyse musculaire.During my PhD thesis, we studied the pathophysiological link between skeletal muscle lipolysis and insulin-resistance. We also evaluated the role of skeletal muscle lipolysis in the regulation of lipid and oxidative metabolism. We have shown that the expression of adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) in skeletal muscle, a limiting enzyme of lipolysis, was negatively correlated with insulin sensitivity in a cohort of lean, obese and type 2 diabetic subjects. To study the effect of ATGL up-regulation on insulin sensitivity, we next over-expressed ATGL in human primary myocytes. Insulin-sensitivity and signaling were both reduced. We also showed that these effects were dependant on diacylglycerol (DAG) production and protein kinase C (PKC) activation. PKC are known to inhibit insulin receptor substrate 1 by serine phosphorylation. We next studied, in a murine mouse model, the effect of high fat feeding on insulin resistance and skeletal muscle lipase expression. We have shown an increase of comparative gene identification 58 (CGI-58) expression (a co-activator of ATGL) and a decrease of hormone sensitive lipase phosphorylation on its activating residue at serine 660. This deregulation of lipolysis was associated with a strong increase of total DAG concentration and PKC ? and e membrane translocationin skeletal muscle. In parallel to this work, we studied the metabolic role of CGI-58 in skeletal muscle through overexpression and knockdown studies in primary human myocytes. We have shown that CGI-58 is a co-activator of ATGL in skeletal muscle. Moreover we observed during the knockdown of CGI-58 a decrease of lipid oxidation and an increase of glucose oxidation. These effects were partly explained by the down-regulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 expression. These effects were mostly mediated by a decrease of peroxysome proliferator-activated receptor beta/d activation by fatty acid from lipolysis. Finally our work shows for the first time a pathophysiological link between lipases deregulation and insulin-resistance in skeletal muscle. These data also significantly contribute to a better understanding of the molecular and physiological regulation of skeletal muscle lipolysis

Can you "read tongue movements"?

International audienceLip reading relies on visible articulators to ease audiovisual speech understanding. However, lips and face alone provide very incomplete phonetic information: the tongue, that is generally not entirely seen, carries an important part of the articulatory information not accessible through lip reading. The question was thus whether the direct and full vision of the tongue allows tongue reading. We have therefore generated a set of audiovisual VCV stimuli by controlling an audiovisual talking head that can display all speech articulators, including tongue, in an augmented speech mode, from articulators movements tracked on a speaker. These stimuli have been played to subjects in a series of audiovisual perception tests in various presentation conditions (audio signal alone, audiovisual signal with profile cutaway display with or without tongue, complete face), at various Signal-to-Noise Ratios. The results show a given implicit effect of tongue reading learning, a preference for the more ecological rendering of the complete face in comparison with the cutaway presentation, a predominance of lip reading over tongue reading, but the capability of tongue reading to take over when the audio signal is strongly degraded or absent. We conclude that these tongue reading capabilities could be used for applications in the domain of speech therapy for speech retarded children, perception and production rehabilitation of hearing impaired children, and pronunciation training for second language learner

Water vapor oxidation of ferritic 441 and austenitic 316L stainless steels at 1100 °C for short duration

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/International audienceA ferritic 441 and an austenitic 316L steels have been exposed to wet argon at 1100 °C. This study focus on the characterization of the oxide scales formed after different exposure times in the range of 2.5-20 min. Raman spectroscopy, XRD, SEM and XPS have been used. For all exposure times, 316L forms a breakaway type thick oxide scale (rupture of the pre-existing passivating film) with iron oxides on its outer part and a mix of spinels with Fe, Cr and Ni for its inner part. For lower water vapor partial pressure, iron oxides are constituted of wüstite. For higher water vapor partial pressure, iron oxides are constituted of a layer of hematite over a layer of magnetite slightly enriched in chromium. Due to strong oxidation condition, oxide scale is not always homogeneous and iron oxides spallation may occur. For 2.5 min of oxidation on 441, a very thin layer of protective chromium oxide is formed. For longer exposure time, an almost homogeneous and much thicker layer mainly consisting of Cr 2 O 3 is produced. The thickness varies slightly and gradually from 4 to 20 min of oxidation. There are Mn-Cr spinels mixed with the chromium oxide. The most external part is strongly enriched in Mn and Fe in a spinel structure. The diffusivity of chromium is regarded as the main cause of the difference of oxidation behavior. In both cases, the first step is a very thin chromium oxide layer. When the oxidation conditions becomes too strong in terms of exposure time or water vapor partial pressure, this oxide layer breaks. The ferritic steel is able to heal and thicken its protective chromium oxide, preventing the breakaway. The healing would be due to the high diffusivity of chromium. The thickening would be caused by the presence of the Mn-Cr spinels which are a less effective diffusion barrier. The lower diffusivity of chromium in austenite promotes the breakaway

Ability of reconstituted fossil vocal tracts to produce speech - Phylogenetic and ontogenetic considerations

International audienceWe analyzed 31 skulls from now to 1.5 Ma (millions anni) BP(Before Present) for fossil hominids available at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris or in the literature: (1) 10-30 ka BP: modern humans: Paleolithic; (2) 90-200 ka BP: anatomically modern humans; (3) 45-90 ka BP: Neanderthals; (4) 1.5 Ma BP: Homo ergaster; These skulls are all well kept and possess a jaw in the majority of cases but the vertebral column has been reconstituted. We attempt to: (1) Localize hyoid bone and then glottis position; (2) Reconstitute a vocal tract model in a plausible way using an articulatory model; (3) Quantify the acoustic capabilities of this reconstituted vocal tract. For this purpose, we combine phylogenesis and ontogenesis. We are in a position to state that our ancestors and distant cousins were equipped with a vocal tract that could produce the same variety of vowel sounds as we can today: the vowels /i a u/. The vocal tract morphology has been favorable to the emergence and production of speech since several hundreds of thousands of years

Relation between mean arterial pressure and renal function in the early phase of shock: a prospective, explorative cohort study

International audienceIntroduction: Because of disturbed renal autoregulation, patients experiencing hypotension-induced renal insult might need higher levels of mean arterial pressure (MAP) than the 65 mmHg recommended level in order to avoid the progression of acute kidney insufficiency (AKI)