Abstract
The crying of one baby (girl) with a cri du chat-syndrome and another baby (boy) with a similar voice, but without the typical B-chromosome deficiency, were analysed by acoustic methods. The particular physical qualities of the voices were compared to those of normal infants.
The typical cry of the girl is different from normal cries in the following characteristics: 1. in the pitch (nearly one octave higher, 600 ... 900 Hz), 2. in a monotonous melody curve, which means a lack of expression in its sound character, 3. in the vocalic sound character similar to singing the vowel “e”, and in the absence of random noise in the frequency spectrum.
The cry of the boy suspected to have the cri du chat-syndrome also had these qualities, but only in certain parts of his crying. The acoustic analysis show some important differences in the crying of these two babies: the girl with the cri du chat-syndrome can cry only in her typical way. The boy changes the character of his crying as soon as he is offended. Then the cry becomes normal in all qualities with exception of a higher frequency. The course of melody, a periodicity with falling frequency at the end of each single cry and the share of random noise give the cry an expression like that of a normal baby. Further acoustic analyses are necessary, especially of infants with cri du chat-like crying who are supposed to have a specific cerebral defect.
Some ideas as to the pathogenesis of the typical cri du chat of babies with the syndrome are discussed. Our results show that it is caused by an organic or functional cerebral lesion and not by a malformation of the voice giving organs.
Addendum: After the manuscript was submitted the paper of V. Vuorenkoski et al. was brought to our attention. Thier results regarding the typical features of cries from babies with the syndrome are in agreement with our findings. This also confirms our suggestion that special analysis of cries may serve to exclude clinical similar cases with different etiology.
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Direktor: Prof. Dr. F. Vogel
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Schroeder, H.J., Schleiermacher, E., Schroeder, T.M. et al. Zur klinischen Differentialdiagnose des Cri du Chat-Syndroms. Hum Genet 4, 294–304 (1967). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00292202
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00292202