Orlandi S, Manfredi C, Bocchi L, Scattoni M L
Dept. of Electronics & Telecommunications, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Firenze, Italy.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012;2012:2953-6. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346583.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are complex developmental disabilities that cause problems with social interaction and communication. ASD are associated with motor development problems, more or less blurred, and with perceptual and sensory brain areas. Crying is the infant's earliest form of communication and recent studies connect this original "language" form with autism disturbs. Being completely non-invasive, cry analysis is an appealing approach for early ASD diagnosis to improve rehabilitation. To this aim, we have developed an automatic system to record newborn cry and movements, during the first six months of life with a specific recording protocol. In this work we present first results of acoustic cry analysis in newborns classified as high-risk subjects being siblings of children already diagnosed as autistics. The work aims at finding possible early ASD signs in high-risk subjects as compared to a group of control subjects based on the fundamental frequency and the vocal tract resonance frequencies. Also, voiced and unvoiced parts of signal and cry-episodes duration are analyzed.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一种复杂的发育性残疾，会导致社交互动和沟通方面的问题。ASD与或多或少模糊不清的运动发育问题以及感知和感觉脑区有关。哭泣是婴儿最早的沟通形式，最近的研究将这种原始的“语言”形式与自闭症障碍联系起来。由于完全非侵入性，哭声分析是早期ASD诊断以改善康复的一种有吸引力的方法。为此，我们开发了一个自动系统，按照特定的记录协议，在婴儿出生后的前六个月记录新生儿的哭声和动作。在这项工作中，我们展示了对被归类为高危受试者（已被诊断为自闭症儿童的兄弟姐妹）的新生儿进行声学哭声分析的初步结果。这项工作旨在基于基频和声道共振频率，与一组对照受试者相比，在高危受试者中寻找可能的早期ASD迹象。此外，还对信号的浊音和清音部分以及哭声片段的持续时间进行了分析。
