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YYou do not have to be a true introvert to hate speaking in public, but people who are already struggling on stage know how stressful it is to lose your voice in the moment of truth. A new line of research shows that speech stress can disrupt crucial circuits in the brain, making speech physically more difficult. And introverts seem to have it worse than extroverts.
Several estimates show that 75% of people have difficulty speaking to the public, at least to some extent. An article published in May in the journal Brain imaging and behavior explains the biological basis for which some of these people may have difficulty making even a sound in front of a crowd. In this pilot study, scientists have shown that stress affects the way the brain communicates with the throat muscles.
Maria Dietrich, Ph.D., first author of the journal and director of the Vocal Control and Vocal Well-Being Laboratory at the University of Missouri, tells the story reverse that this study systematically explores the roots of vocal behavior changes in times of stress.
"We know that there is a way of limbic vocalization, for example to laugh and cry," she says. "But the data is lacking to show that limbic-motor interactions can also have an impact on voice production during speech."
The Dietrich team tried to fill this gap.
Their findings focus on several areas of the brain that work together to control the laryngeal muscles, the throat muscles that help produce complex sounds. The laryngeal motor cortex is a major contributor to this coordination, but speech is also influenced by the combination of other "secondary" brain areas, including the cingulate cortex.
The results suggest that stress decreases activity in these areas and, by extension, the muscles that they control. This creates that feeling of "frog in the throat".
To show how this happens, Dietrich and his team told 13 women that they were to deliver an impromptu five-minute speech on choosing the ideal candidate for a position in a law firm. Then they were asked to prepare the speech, which could start at any time. Then the team took fMRI images of their brains and took saliva samples to measure stress hormone levels.
Anticipate stress and plan how to manage it can be helpful.
While the women were preparing for the speeches, Dietrich and his team observed that their cortisol levels, a stress hormone, were on the rise. But parallel to these peaks, they observed disabling in the secondary areas of the brain that influence voice control – for example, the anterior and middle cingulate cortex. This trend has continued in all areas, but in people specifically qualified as introverts, the situation has worsened.
Their badysis revealed links between people clbadified as introverts, high levels of "cortisol reactivity" and a further decrease in activity in an area of the laryngeal motor cortex – a major area of the brain that controls vocalisation. Essentially, people who are more sensitive to stress and who qualify as introverts may have other areas of the brain affected by the stress of a speech.
Dietrich explains that previous studies have also shown that some people are termed "laryngeal stress responders" because they tend to have deeper changes in their vocal muscles when they are put on the spot and invited to speak. These findings suggest that being more introverted can predispose someone to one of those "stress reactions" that makes conversation so difficult, perhaps in part because of this newly identified activity in the brain.
Fortunately for "stress workers", there is many ways to improve the technique of public speaking. But Dietrich adds that there is at least one way to handle the stress of the day before it even happens, which will make your brain and voice stronger.
"Anticipating stress and planning how to handle it can be helpful," she says. "It helps prevent overwhelming emotions, quickly reduces stress and builds self-confidence."
Abstract: The knowledge on brain networks that underlie the vocalization of healthy individuals under various working conditions is rare but essential for understanding voice disorders. The objectives of our study were to determine (1) the effect of social evaluative stress on the central neuronal control of phonation underlying speech production; and (2) neuronal signature, personality profile, and aerodynamic vocal function in relation to salivary cortisol responses. Thirteen healthy women underwent an event-based sparse sampling fMRI protocol consisting of production of expressed and whispered sentences with and without exposure to public speaking by the social evaluator stressor. Participants completed a personality questionnaire, rated the negative emotional state scales and provided salivary cortisol samples. Throughout the sample, the contrast of the tasks of sound production revealed that exposure to stressors resulted in a peak activation in the right caudate, as well as concomitant deactivations in the pgACC bilaterals and the aMCC, and in IFG, BA 9, BA 10, insula, putamen and thalamus. . There were individual differences in stress-induced cerebral activations as a function of stress reactivity, with increased cortisol reactivity badociated with lower activity of the laryngeal motor cortex and lower scores on aspects of stress. # 39; extroversion. Our data confirm that stress alters the speech control of speech production through limbic-motor interactions. The results corroborate the theory of Trait voice disorders (Roy and Bless, 2000) and help to decisively illuminate the study of voice disorders such as primary dysphonia of muscle tension.
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