Modulation of auditory-vocal feedback control due to planned changes in voice f _o

Previous studies have demonstrated that voice fundamental frequency (f _o ), or pitch, relies on auditory feedback to monitor and correct for errors in production. When voice-pitch auditory feedback is unexpectedly perturbed, individuals typically produce a compensatory change in f _o that opposes the direction of the pitch-perturbation. Studies comparing steady vowel vocalizations and speech tasks have demonstrated task-dependent modulation of the compensatory response, but the effects of planning to volitionally change f _o during active vocalization have yet to be explored. Ten musicians and ten non-musicians were asked to perform two vocal tasks. Both tasks started off at a conversational f _o . In one task, pitch-shifted feedback was presented when the participants were planning to hold f _o constant (steady f _o ), and in the other, feedback was shifted while participants were in the planning stage prior to raising f _o (raised f _o ) from a steady state. Acoustical analyses of f _o were performed to measure the peak magnitude and latency of both the compensatory response as well as the voluntary f _o change. Results showed that planning to change pitch modulates the mechanisms controlling feedback-based error correction of f _o , and musicality affects how individuals incorporate modulations in auditory feedback with the feedforward plans to increase voice f _o .