Acoustic characterisation of the tonic syllable in portuguese

A particular problem for the automatic prediction of prosody in speech synthesis is the realisation of accented syllables since these are affected by many parameters and are perceptually very salient. For the Portuguese language, in Europe, a set of comprehensive quantitative characterisation data and rules is totally lacking. The present paper is intended to be a quantitative contribution to the solution of this problem. In this paper, a preliminary modelling of duration, intensity and variation of F0 in the tonic syllable will be presented. The dependencies of the model with the syllable position in the word and the word position in the phrase are also presented.

Alzheimer’s electroencephalogram event scalp and source localization

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia which causes a progressive and irreversible impairment of several cognitive functions. The aging population has been increasing significantly in recent decades and this disease affects mainly the elderly. Its diagnostic accuracy is relatively low and there is not a biomarker able to detect AD without invasive tests. Despite the progress in better understanding the disease there remains no prospect of cure at least in the near future. The electroencephalogram (EEG) test is a widely available technology in clinical settings. It may help diagnosis of brain disorders, once it can be used in patients who have cognitive impairment involving a general decrease in overall brain function or in patients with a located deficit. This study is a new approach to improve the scalp localization and the detection of brain anomalies (EEG temporal events) sources associated with AD by using the EEG.