Browse Articles

Despite the prevalence of PD, diagnosing PD is expensive, requires specialized testing, and is often inaccurate. Moreover, diagnosis is often made late in the disease course when treatments are less effective. Using existing voice data from patients with PD and healthy controls, the authors created and trained two different algorithms: one using logistic regression and another employing an artificial neural network (ANN).

Voice pitch affects perceived authoritativeness, competency, and leadership capacity. In this study, the authors suggest that examining certain measures of brain activity collected using an affordable EEG could predict advertising effectiveness, which may be invaluable in future neuromarketing research. Understanding voice pitch and other factors that cause implicit bias may allow significant advances in marketing, facilitating business success.

The authors investigate the negative effects stress has on teen mental and physical health. Through a survey, they give Virginia teens a voice in revising the Health and Physical Education curriculum to include a standards of learning (SOL). Notably they identify factors contributing to stress levels including homework level, amount of free and sleep time, parental pressure and family encouragement.

Patients with cleft palate frequently struggle with speech issues such as nasal or congested speech. Lin and Parkinson conduct a meta-analysis to determine how two common types of cleft palate repair surgery compare in terms of their effects on patient's speech.

Music is an important part of the day for many of us, but what makes some combinations of sound more pleasant to the ear than others? In this article the authors investigate the role of some characteristics of sound on the perception of a pleasant vs harsh musical note.

Because humans live in societies, they may feel social pressure to conform to majority opinions. This follow-up study explores whether teenagers are likely to change their opinions to match others’, particularly in ambiguous situations.

Control of voluntary and involuntary movements is one of the most important aspects of human neurological function, but the mechanisms of motor control are not completely understood. In this study, the authors use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to stimulate a portion of the motor cortex while subjects performed either discrete (e.g. throwing) or rhythmic (e.g. walking) movements. By recording electrical activity in the muscles during this process, the authors showed that motor evoked potentials (MEPs) measured in the muscles during TMS stimulation are larger in amplitude for discrete movements than for rhythmic movements. Interestingly, they also found that MEPs during transitions between rhythmic and discrete movements were nearly identical and larger in amplitude than those recorded during either rhythmic or discrete movements. This research provides important insights into the mechanisms of neurological control of movement and will serve as the foundation for future studies to learn more about temporal variability in neural activity during different movement types.