L’équipe CREAM recherche un étudiant francophone pour un stage de recherche niveau M2, sur l’influence d’une manipulation acoustique de la voix sur l’anxiété pré-opératoire.

Période: Mars à Juillet 2019

Encadrants : Gilles Guerrier (Médecin Anesthésie-réanimation chirurgicale, Hôpital Cochin, APHP, Paris) & Jean-Julien Aucouturier (Chargé de recherche CNRS, IRCAM, Paris)

Contexte : Le stage est proposé dans le cadre d’une étude clinique en collaboration entre l’Hôpital Cochin et l’Institut de Recherche et Coordination en Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) à Paris. Le stage est financé par le projet ANR REFLETS (“Rétroaction Faciales et Linguistiques et Etats de Stress Traumatiques”), qui vise à étudier l’impact de la voix sur les émotions.

Description du projet : L’anxiété pré-opératoire est un phénomène connu depuis longtemps chez les patients qui vont bénéficier d’une chirurgie [Corman Am J Surg 1958]. L’anxiété a un impact sur le niveau et la qualité de rétention d’informations et de consignes fournies par les différents interlocuteurs (chirurgien, anesthésiste, personnel paramédical et
administratif) [Johnston Ann Behav Med 1993]. Les moyens de limiter cette anxiété de façon non médicamenteuse sont actuellement peu nombreux. Nos travaux récents ont montré qu’il est possible de transformer le son d’une voix parlée en temps-réel, au fur et à mesure d’une conversation, pour lui donner des caractéristiques émotionnelles [Arias IEEE Trans. Aff. Comp. 2018]. Sur des volontaires sains, nous avons montré qu’une voix transformée pour être plus souriante a un impact émotionnel positif sur l’interlocuteur [Arias Cur. Biol. 2018]. Nous proposons d’évaluer l’impact de ce dispositif de modulation de la voix humaine sur la qualité de la prise en charge de la population des patients anxieux avant chirurgie. 

Rôle de l’étudiant.e dans le projet : Le/la stagiaire participera en premier lieu à l’inclusion des participants dans le service de chirurgie ambulatoire de l’Hopital Cochin, sous la supervision du Dr. Gilles Guerrier. Sa responsabilité sera d’expliquer le protocole aux participants, de recueillir leur consentement, d’installer l’équipement nécessaire (casque, micro), puis de veiller au bon recueil et enregistrement des données avant et après l’intervention. En second lieu, le/la stagiaire participera à l’analyse des données collectées, leur interprétation et la rédaction d’un rapport ou d’un article scientifique. 

Profil recherché : Nous cherchons pour ce stage un.e étudiant.e ayant une formation médicale ou paramédicale (ex. ARC, orthophonie), ou une formation de sciences cognitives expérimentales avec une orientation de recherche clinique et d’innovation pour la santé. La personne idéale pour ce stage aura une expérience et un intérêt pour interagir avec des patients en milieu hospitalier, une bonne connaissance des procédures liées aux essais cliniques (randomisation, consentement, etc.) et d’excellentes capacités à gérer un emploi du temps d’inclusion et de suivi de patients et à assurer la tracabilité des données enregistrées avec l’outil informatique. Une familiarité avec l’enregistrement sonore, ou la voix humaine, seront un plus.

Conditions :
Le stage fera l’objet d’une convention tri-partite entre l’étudiant.e, l’établissement de formation du M2, et l’IRCAM. Le stage sera rémunéré au montant forfaitaire, d’environ 500e par mois.

Comment candidater : Envoyer un CV et une lettre de motivation répondant aux points recherchés ci-dessus à Gilles Guerrier guerriergilles@gmail.com & Jean-Julien AUCOUTURIER, aucouturier@gmail.com

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At the occasion of the PhD defense of Laura Rachman on Dec. 7th, the CREAM lab is happy to organize a mini-symposium on recent voice affective science and neuroscience with two prominent researchers from the Netherlands, Prof. Disa Sauter (Department of Social Psychology, Universiteit van Amsterdam) and Prof. Sonja Kotz (Department of Neuropsychology & Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University). The two talks will be followed in the afternoon by the PhD viva of Laura Rachman, which is also public.

Date: Friday December 7th

Hours: 10h30-12h (symposium), 14h (PhD. viva)

Place: Salle Stravinsky, Institut de Recherche et Coordination en Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), 1 Place Stravinsky 75004 Paris. [access]

 

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Friday Dec. 7th, 10h30-12h

Symposium: Recent voice research from the Netherlands (Prof. Disa Sauter, Prof. Sonja Kotz)

 

10h30-11H15 – Prof. Disa Sauter (Universiteit van Amsterdam, NL)

Preparedness for emotions: Evidence for discrete negative and positive emotions from vocal signals

We all have emotions, but where do they come from? Functional accounts of emotion propose that emotions are adaptations which have evolved to help us deal with recurring challenges and opportunities. In this talk, I will present evidence of preparedness from studies of emotional vocalisations like laughs, screams, and sighs. This work suggests that a number of negative and positive emotional states are associated with discrete, innate, and universal vocal signals.

 

11h15-12h – Prof. Sonja Kotz (Maastricht University, NL)

Prediction in voice and speech

Prediction in voice and speech processing is determined by “when” an event is likely to occur (regularity), and “what” type of event can be expected at a given point in time (order). In line with these assumptions, I will present a cortico-subcortical model that involves the division of labor between the cerebellum and the basal ganglia in the predictive tracing of acoustic events. I will discuss recent human electrophysiological and fMRI data in line with this model.

 

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Friday Dec. 7th, 14h-16h30

PhD Defense: The “other-voice” effect (Laura Rachman)

At 14h on the same day, Laura Rachman (PhD candidate, Sorbonne-Université) will defend her PhD thesis, conducted in the CREAM Lab/ Perception and Sound Design Team (STMS – IRCAM/CNRS/Sorbonne Université). The viva is public, and all are welcome.

 

14h-16h30 – Ms. Laura Rachman (IRCAM, CNRS, Sorbonne Université)

The “other-voice” effect: how speaker identity and language familiarity influence the way we process emotional speech

The human voice is a powerful tool to convey emotions. Humans hear voices on a daily basis and are able to rapidly extract relevant information to successfully interact with others. The theoretical aim of this dissertation is to investigate the role of familiarity on emotional voice processing. A set of behavioral and electrophysiological studies investigated how self- versus non self-produced voices influence the processing of emotional speech utterances. By contrasting self and other, familiarity is here assessed at a personal level. The results of a first set of studies show a dissociation of explicit and implicit processing of the self-voice. While explicit discrimination of an emotional self-voice and other-voice was somewhat impaired, implicit self-processing prompted a self-advantage in emotion recognition and speaker discrimination. The results of a second set of studies show a prioritization for the non-self voice in the processing of emotional and low-level acoustic changes, reflected in faster electrophysiological (EEG) and behavioral responses. In a third set of studies, the effect of voice familiarity on emotional voice perception is assessed at a larger sociocultural scale by comparing speech utterances in the native and a foreign language. Taken together, this disseration highlights some ways in which the ‘otherness’ of a voice – whether a non-self speaker or a foreign language speaker – is processed with a higher priority on the one hand, but with less acoustic precision on the other hand.

Download link: Thesis manuscript

Thesis Committee:

• Prof. Sonja Kotz  – Reviewer – Department of Neuropsychology and Psychopharmacology, Maastricht University
• Prof. Pascal Belin – Reviewer – Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université
• Prof. Disa Sauter – Examiner – Department of Social Psychology, Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Dr. Marie Gomot – Examiner – Centre de Pédopsychiatrie, INSERM, Université de Tours
• Prof. Mohamed Chetouani – Examiner – Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique, Sorbonne Université
• Dr. Stéphanie Dubal – Thesis Co-director – Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, CNRS, Sorbonne Université
• Dr. Jean-Julien Aucouturier – Thesis Co-director – STMS – Ircam/CNRS/Sorbonne Université

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We are thrilled by the reaction of the press to our publication “Auditory smiles trigger unconscious facial imitation” a few months ago in Current Biology. Some interesting views on the findings, but also more general interviews with lead Author Pablo Arias, like this podcast hosted by Carl Robinson. Here is a quick press round up.

Research article:

Reference : Arias, P., Belin, P., & Aucouturier, J. J. (2018). Auditory smiles trigger unconscious facial imitation. Current Biology, 28(14), R782-R783. [html] [pdf]

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New paper out this month in PNAS, in which we use new audio software (CLEESE) to deploy reverse-correlation in the space of speech prosody, and uncover robust and shared mental representations of trustworthiness and dominance in a speaker’s voice.  The paper is open-access, data and analysis code freely available at https://zenodo.org/record/1186278 and the CLEESE software is open-source and available as a free download here.

Ponsot, E., Burred, JJ., Belin, P. & Aucouturier, JJ. (2018) Cracking the social code of speech prosody using reverse correlation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [html] [pdf]

Presse:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/want-sound-someone-people-can-trust-new-software-could-help

Australia Science Channel: https://australiascience.tv/how-to-make-a-good-impression-its-not-what-you-say-its-how-you-say-it/

 

 

 

 

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The CREAM lab organizes a short, impromptu workshop on the biology, cultural history, musicality and acoustic of !screams!, to be held in IRCAM, Paris, on Thursday 22nd June, 2-5pm. The workshop will consist of four invited talks, followed by a discussion around drinks and cakes.

CREAM organise un petit séminaire impromptu sur la biologie, l’histoire culturelle, la musicalité et l’acoustique des !CRIS!, il aura lieu à l’IRCAM le Jeudi 22 Juin de 14h à 17h. Le séminaire sera constitué de quatre présentations suivies par une discussion autour de quelques boissons et gâteaux.

 

 

Date: Thursday 22nd June 2017, 2-5pm

Place: Stravinsky Room, IRCAM, 1 Place Stravinsky, 75004 Paris.

Attendance: free, subjected to seat availability.

Local organizers: Louise Goupil (louise.goupil@ircam.fr) , JJ Aucouturier (aucouturie@gmail.com)

 

 

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Exciting news! As of March 2017, DAVID, our emotional voice transformation tool, is available as a free download on the IRCAM Forum, the online community of all science and art users of audio software developped in IRCAM. This new plateform will provide updates on the latest releases of the software, and better user support. In addition, we’ll demonstrate the software at the IRCAM Forum days in Paris on March 15-17, 2017. Come say hi! (and sound all very realistically happy/sad/afraid) if you’re around.

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CREAM Lab is hosting a small series of distinguised talks on reverse-correlation this month:

• Wednesday 22nd March 2017 (11:00) – Prof. Fréderic Gosselin (University of Montreal)
• Thursday 23rd March 2017 (11:30) – Prof. Peter Neri (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris).

These talks are organised in the context of a workshop on reverse-correlation for high-level audio cognition, to be held in IRCAM the same days (on-invitation-only). Both talks are free for all, in IRCAM (1 Place Stravinsky, 75004 Paris). Details (titles, abstract) are below.

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A recently emerging view in music cognition holds that music is not only social and participatory in its production, but also in its perception, i.e. that music is in fact perceived as the sonic trace of social relations between a group of real or virtual agents. To investigate whether it is at all the case, we asked a group of free collective improvisers from Conservatoire Supérieur National de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP) to try to communicate a series of social attitudes (being dominant, arrogant, disdainful, conciliatory or caring) to one another, using only their musical interaction. Both musicians and non-musicians were able to recognize these attitudes from the recorded music.

The study, a collaboration between Clément Canonne and JJ Aucouturier, was published today in Cognition. The corpus of 100 improvised duets used in the study is also available online:  http://cream.ircam.fr/?p=575

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In collaboration with our friend Tomoya Nakai from Kazuo Okanoya’s laboratory in Tokyo, we are delighted to put up a one-day workshop on Music and Speech cognition, with a special focus on emotions, in Tokyo, on Monday Nov. 7th 2016.

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