Variability of the cry melody and the melody spectrum as indicators for certain CNS disorders

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Abstract
Pain cries of 42 infants during the first week of life were investigated by signal analysis methods, extracting the time variations of the fundamental frequency [melody] with high accuracy in frequency and time. Several methods are proposed to define measures for the variability of this melody. We tested the suitability of these measures as indicators for certain brain disorders. Indicators which measure fine and fast frequency modulations [microvariability] have been proven to be possible candidates for pathology indicators. Our melody spectrum is an effective tool for overviewing the several components of variability. The pathology indicators derived from the melody spectrum yield a statistically significant difference between infants with severe cerebral disorders and those in the control group. Due to the existence of discontinuities during prespeech development, pathology indicators are strongly dependent on age, maturity and individual peculiarities and have to be closely tuned to developmental stages.

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