Audio-perceptual asymmetries and phonoscopic asymmetries in singers

Abstract

The vocal health of the singer is one important element to practice his/her vocation in an appropriate and efficient manner. On this basis rely the technical demands of vocal skills required by each style. The phonatory asymmetries, functional as well as structural, tend to be frequent in singers and these generate vocal discomfort or limitations in the technical skill. 

The objective was to verify the presence of vocal asymmetries detected audio-perceptually by means of the laryngeal phonoscopic analysis in singers of the city of Córdoba.

Cross-Sectional, Observational and Descriptive Research. The number of 64 singers were assessed, they belonged to different choirs and music schools in the city of Córdoba in 2019, with prior informed consent, from which 37 were selected without organic pathology at a langyngeal level, whose speech and hearing assessment resulted in phonatory asymmetries. These asymmetries were detected by the hearing-perceptual assessment that was performed in different cephalic levels (rotation and flexion). Subsequently, they were verified by the phonoscopic analysis of the respective video-fiberoptic laryngoscopies (asymmetries of middle line, of the arytenoids, of the vocal process and of the length in the vocal folds), conducted with a central approach in order to visually assess the asymmetries.

Of the total of singers with perceptual asymmetries (n: 37, 100%): the 62% (n:23) has asymmetries in the cephalic rotation, the 8% (n: 3) in cephalic flexion and the 30% (n: 11) has perceptual asymmetries combined with rotation and flexion. By means of the phonoscopy, it was observed that the 100% of the cases presented some kind of asymmetry: the 95% (n:35) has combined asymmetries: of the middle line, of the arytenoids, of the vocal processes and/or of the length of the vocal folds, whereas the remaining 5% (n:2) has only the asymmetry of the middle line.

It was verified that laryngeal phonoscopic asymmetries were found in the total of the selected singers with audio-perceptual vocal asymmetries. The inclusion the asymmetrical assessment of the protocols of speech and hearing appraisal of the voice allows to specify the diagnosis and the specific therapy, such as it is required by the technical demands and the specific vocal skills of singers. It is expected to work in detail on the relationship between the perceptual asymmetries in the different cephalic positions and in each laryngeal phonoscopic finding