Towards a Soft Artificial Larynx: A Biomimetic Design

The larynx is one of the smallest but also one of the most complex organs in the human body, with three main functions: breathing, swallowing, and phonation. In case of total laryngectomy, all these functions are missing. Currently, they are replaced with a tracheal stoma and a vocal prosthesis, which give many physical and social problems to the subject. The long-term aim of this work is to create an implantable artificial larynx, able to reproduce all the larynx functions. Here, we present the first steps toward the creation of the artificial organ. We analyzed the larynx of different animal classes, to find basic structures and movements, shared among all the Tetrapoda. We used these models as a guide for simplifying the human larynx to obtain a functional design. We found that two cartilages (i.e., the cricoid and the arytenoids) and three muscles (i.e., the posterior cricoarytenoid, the lateral cricoarytenoid, and the thyroarytenoid) are common to all the studied species. Based on this, we proposed a larynx design, suggesting also possible materials, whose validity will be tested in the near future.