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Brain and Voice Signatures in Teachers

NCT06126627 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 100

Last updated 2025-08-27

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Primary muscle tension dysphonia voice disorder with symptoms of vocal strain and vocal fatigue is common and can have a significant negative impact on quality of Life. Yet, primary muscle tension dysphonia's causes are unknown precluding precise diagnostic classification. Stress and personality are thought to play a role and thus, the project aims to determine the practical and clinical effect of stress on the control of voice and speech in the brain. Participants are female early career teachers and student teachers with symptoms of vocal fatigue, as well as control participants without vocal fatigue, who perform speech tasks on two different occasions. Neural (imaging of brain), psychobiological (saliva, personality), and voice and speech (muscle activity of voice muscles on the neck with surface sensors, audio recordings) data will compare reactivity patterns of teachers who are stressresponders with those who are nonresponders as well as control participants. The central hypothesis is that voice box stress responders have heightened emotion-motor activations involving the emotional voice production pathway, which correlate with changes in voice muscle activity in the anterior neck. The results will provide fundamentally missing data in our understanding of the role of stress in vocal complaints and will yield new insights about the neural underpinnings of primary muscle tension dysphonia. The study findings will have a significant impact on how clinicians identify so-called laryngoresponders to help them prevent voice disorders.

Conditions

  • Voice Disorders
  • Voice Fatigue

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Stress induction

Induction of anticipatory stress to compare voice and speech control and production with and without exposure to stress.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University Hospital, Bonn

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Maria Dietrich, PhD · University Hospital, Bonn

Study Design

Allocation
NON_RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
21 Years
Max Age
39 Years
Sex
FEMALE
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-08-01
Primary Completion
2026-06-30
Completion
2026-07-31

Countries

  • Germany

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT06126627 on ClinicalTrials.gov