14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

A Model of the Biomechanics and Neural Control of the Tongue, Jaw, Hyoid Bone and Larynx

Rafael Laboissière (1), Vittorio Sanguineti (2), David J. Ostry (3)

(1) Institut de la Communication Parlée, Grenoble, France
(2) DIST, University of Genova, Italy,
(3) Dept. of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

A model of the mid-sagittal plane motion of the tongue, jaw, hyoid bone and larynx is presented, based on the λ version of equilibrium point hypothesis. The model includes muscle properties and realistic geometrical arrangement of muscles, modeled neural inputs and reflexes, and dynamics of soft tissue and bony structures. The focus is on the organization of control signals underlying vocal tract motions. A number of muscle synergies of the system are identified, showing that systematic sources of variation of midsagittal vocal tract motions can be accounted for, at the muscle level, with six independent commands, each corresponding to a direction of articulator motion. It is suggested that individual movements can be accounted for by a simple additive control model.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Laboissière, Rafael / Sanguineti, Vittorio / Ostry, David J. (1999): "A model of the biomechanics and neural control of the tongue, jaw, hyoid bone and larynx", In ICPhS-14, 1777-1780.