Susanne Fuchs
Research Project
Breathing during motion and vocalization in baboons and young children
Project Abstract
Background
Breathing with the lungs, i.e. extending and shrinking the volume of the lungs during inhalation and exhalation, is a live-saving and lifelong rhythm in mammals involved in a variety of processes such as cardiovascular activity, attention, motor preparation and vocalization. Breathing in humans is not only delivering our body with oxygen but is also a necessary requirement for speech production (Fuchs & Rochet-Capellan, 2021). During speech acquisition, we need to learn how to coordinate the expiratory airflow with laryngeal actions as well as the upper articulators to express emotional states such as cries (Wilder, 1974) and later the sounds of our native language.
There has been some dispute in the literature about whether our closest ancestors were able to fine-tune their respiration (Perlman & Clark 2015) or whether they vocalize on in- and exhalation (Provine, 2000) and have therefore limited capacities for realizing long utterances. Based on selected specimen (MacLarnon & Hewitt, 1999), an increased thoracic vertebral canal has been measured. This was interpreted with respect to enhanced control over breathing as a major evolutionary advantage going hand in hand with the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal motion.
Breathing in babies has often been investigated from a medical perspective, specifically for preterm babies. Other studies on learning the coordination between breathing (McFarland et al., 2020), early speech acquisition, and locomotion, e.g., in vocal motor babbling are limited (Connaghan et al. 2004), even if theoretical approaches exist (e.g., Pouw & Fuchs, 2022). The early acquisition of coordinative activity between respiration, phonation and motion in babies may provide some insights into how speech evolved.
Aims of the project and research questions
In the project she will carry out at Iméra, Susanne Fuchs will generally investigate the relationship between breathing – motion and vocalization in young infants and baboons. The project consists of two major axes and a methodological innovation. In one axis, she will carry out a longitudinal case study on baby breathing in coordination with vocalization, babbling and first words. She will try to answer the research question if babies initially vocalize/cry on in- and exhalation and later produce sound on exhalation only – mirroring speech evolution. This work will involve at experts in at least two different labs, the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL) and the Centre PsyClé from Aix-Marseille University.
In the second axis, She intents to collect respiratory data and motion data from baboons at the field station of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive. The respiratory data will be acquired with thermographic imaging that can capture the temperature surface of the animals in specific regions of interest. From these data, inhalation and exhalation may be derived as suggested in Demartsev et al. (2022). For this purpose, she intends to place the thermal cameras within the labs in the field station. In the experiments that have been carried out there over the last years, the baboons solve certain tasks by pointing at a computer screen. Recording their pointing motion together with their respiratory behaviour would be one of the pilot studies she’d like to carry out. She wants to test the idea that respiration is phase-locked to pointing motions (based on theoretical account of Perl et al., 2019). Moreover, she assumes that the coordination is closer in time when the baboon solves the task successfully while it may be more variable when the baboon is unsuccessful. The thermographic imaging needs to be piloted properly and involves extensive preprocessing. This will contribute to future work in non-human and human breathing behavior. This work will offer new insights and if successful, it might be the first step towards grounding a novel research discipline.
Biography
Susanne Fuch’s career started with working two shifts in a shoe factory that allowed her to study Social Psychology at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena in the former GDR. After the unification of Germany, she moved to Berlin and studied Speech Science, Drama, and Literature. She received a diploma from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in Speech Science, Voice, and Language disorders. In her thesis, she analyzed speaking styles in the presentation of radio news. Because she had a passion for art and theatre, she additionally studied drama and intercultural communication at HU zu Berlin and worked as a director assistant at the Schauspielhaus in Chemnitz. Finally, she decided to move on with science, received an ESRC fellowship, and did a Ph.D. at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh (UK) under the supervision of Prof. Scobbie, Prof. Wrench, and Prof. Pompino-Marschall. In her Ph.D. she worked on the phonological voicing contrast in German and its underlying motor control principles. Specifically, she was interested in the interplay between laryngeal actions, their coordination with the upper vocal tract, and how this coordination changes in different syllable positions. After her Ph.D., she did a Postdoc at GIPSA-lab in Grenoble, which focussed on speech motor control aspects, such as biomechanics and the role of individual anatomical properties that can influence the production of specific sounds. Then she moved back to Berlin and became a member and coordinator of the Phonetics Group at the Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS). Between 2009-2012, she was part of the language documentation project in Vanuatu under the heading of Prof. Manfred Krifka and went on a fieldwork trip to Ambrym for 6 weeks. She was briefly trained as a camera woman and the task during her stay was to document their scientific work and make it accessible to a wider audience.
In 2017, ZAS became a Leibniz Institute within the Leibniz Association. With this change, she was offered a permanent position and the group leadership of the Laboratory Phonology group (FB1). Between 2021- 2023, she has been Vice Director of ZAS. Among other activities, she serves as an associate editor for the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and as an editorial board member of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. She has been reviewing for several grant agencies, among them the European Commission, German Research Council, and the National Science Foundation. She was a member of the Ethical Board of the German Linguistic Society. Since 2022, she has been a member of the Open Data Network within the Priority Program “Visual Communication” (ViCom), a member of the steering committee of ViCom, and nominated by the Leibniz Association as a member for AcadmiaNet, a platform for excellent female researchers.