Vocal Tract MRI
We use vocal tract MRI to look at the articulators (such as the lips, tongue and larynx) as someone is speaking.
Have a look at the videos below, which demonstrate vocal tract MRI, or read our research summaries of studies that use vocal tract MRI to investigate speech timing, stuttering, and speech movement variability.
Dubbed_speech_complexity_withsubs.movVocal Tract MRI is a non-invasive way to view the articulators (e.g. the lips, tongue, jaw and larynx) as someone is speaking.
Here, Charlie is scanned as she talks about speech production and how we can record it using MRI.
A standard MRI machine is used, but we created a special sequences which tells the scanner how to record images very very quickly! The images are reconstructed at 33 frames per second - about as fast a smartphone camera!
This technique was created with Physicist, Dr. Mark Chiew and Cognitive Neuroscientist, Prof. Kate Watkins, during Charlie's PhD research at the University of Oxford.