Estimation of Mechanism for Esophageal Speech Method Aimed to Realize the Esophageal Speech Training System

The patients who undergo the laryngectomy lose their voice. The voice is very important communication method for human being, and these patients become to feel inconvenient. For these patients some speaking method are developed and used. One of them is the esophageal speech method, this method uses the air from esophagus to generate the primary tone. This method has good characteristics at voice quality and convenience. But learning of this method is difficult, the acquisition rate of a simple conversation is about 60-70%, and the taring term is more than 6 months. One of the reasons is the scientific training method is not established. In this research, we aim to establish the training method of esophageal speech with bio monitoring, the esophageal speech method uses some muscles for taking in air to the esophagus. Therefore, it is important that the clarification of “what muscle” is activated in esophageal speech. And “when” the muscle activates is important, too. In this report, we took a survey to esophageal speech users, for clarification of “what muscle” is activated in esophageal speech, and clarified that the muscles of mouth and abdominal were tensing up. Based on these results, we guessed the tongue and diaphragm were activated in esophageal speech. Therefore, the myoelectric signal of the lower jaw and the lowest intercostal were measured, at the same time, the voice was measured, too. From the measurement result, it was clarified that the sequence of each muscle activation and voice generation was same.