A modeling investigation of vowel-to-vowel movement planning in acoustic and muscle spaces

The primary objective of this research was to explore the coordinate space in which speech movements are planned. A two dimensional biomechanical model of the vocal tract (tongue, lips, jaw, and pharynx) was constructed based on anatomical and physiological data from a subject. The model transforms neural command signals into the actions of muscles. The tongue was modeled by a 221-node finite element mesh. Each of the eight tongue muscles defined within the mesh was controlled by a virtual muscle model. The other vocal-tract components were modeled as simple 2nd-order systems. The model's geometry was adapted to a speaker, using MRI scans of the speaker's vocal tract.; The vocal tract model, combined with an adaptive controller that consisted of a forward model (mapping 12-dimensional motor commands to a 64-dimensional acoustic spectrum) and an inverse model (mapping acoustic trajectories to motor command trajectories), was used to simulate and explore the implications of two planning hypotheses: planning in motor space vs. acoustic space. The acoustic, kinematic, and muscle activation (EMG) patterns of vowel-to-vowel sequences generated by the model were compared to data from the speaker whose acoustic, kinematic and EMG were also recorded. The simulation results showed that: (a) modulations of the motor commands effectively accounted for the effects of speaking rate on EMG, kinematic, and acoustic outputs; (b) the movement and acoustic trajectories were influenced by vocal tract biomechanics; and (c) both planning schemes produced similar articulatory movement, EMG, muscle length, force, and acoustic trajectories, which were also comparable to the subject's data under normal speaking conditions.; In addition, the effects of a bite-block on measured EMG, kinematics and formants were simulated by the model. Acoustic planning produced successful simulations but motor planning did not. The simulation results suggest that with somatosensory feedback but no auditory feedback, feedforward commands are relied upon initially and are modified with practice by corrections based on the difference between expected and produced somatosensory feedback. Overall these simulation and experimental results provide support for the use of an acoustic space rather than a motor space for articulatory movement planning.