Project overview
In partnership with the Find Your Voice Research Lab at New York University, this project examines how intensive voice use and mid-life hormonal changes interact over the course of a career. We focus on female professional voice users such as news broadcasters and analyze decades’ worth of publicly available recordings of their speech. This retrospective study allows us to observe how an individual’s voice may shift as they age especially under the high demands of professional voice use. By pinpointing specific vocal cues that change over time for these “super-users,” we aim to disentangle the effects of natural aging, hormonal fluctuations, and vocal load on voice acoustics. Insights from this work will deepen our understanding of long-term vocal health and resilience. In addition, it may inform voice training and hygiene practices for professional voice users to help them protect their voices as well as help clinicians distinguish between age-related versus hormone-related vocal changes.