Thinking the voice: neural correlates of voice perception

Belin, Pascal; Fecteau, Shirley; Bédard, Catherine

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.01.008

Cited by 722 publications

(690 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…The right STG and STS have been shown to play a critical role in the analysis of voice information (Belin et al 2004) and dynamic pitch. The analysis of prosodic features of speech has also been suggested to be lateralized to right STG.…”

Section: Functional Anatomic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics

Poeppel

Idsardi

Wassenhove

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

394

371

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Speech perception consists of a set of computations that take continuously varying acoustic waveforms as input and generate discrete representations that make contact with the lexical representations stored in long-term memory as output. Because the perceptual objects that are recognized by the speech perception enter into subsequent linguistic computation, the format that is used for lexical representation and processing fundamentally constrains the speech perceptual processes. Consequently, theories of speech perception must, at some level, be tightly linked to theories of lexical representation. Minimally, speech perception must yield representations that smoothly and rapidly interface with stored lexical items. Adopting the perspective of Marr, we argue and provide neurobiological and psychophysical evidence for the following research programme. First, at the implementational level, speech perception is a multi-time resolution process, with perceptual analyses occurring concurrently on at least two time scales (approx. 20-80 ms, approx. 150-300 ms), commensurate with (sub)segmental and syllabic analyses, respectively. Second, at the algorithmic level, we suggest that perception proceeds on the basis of internal forward models, or uses an 'analysis-by-synthesis' approach. Third, at the computational level (in the sense of Marr), the theory of lexical representation that we adopt is principally informed by phonological research and assumes that words are represented in the mental lexicon in terms of sequences of discrete segments composed of distinctive features. One important goal of the research programme is to develop linking hypotheses between putative neurobiological primitives (e.g. temporal primitives) and those primitives derived from linguistic inquiry, to arrive ultimately at a biologically sensible and theoretically satisfying model of representation and computation in speech.

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Section: Functional Anatomic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics

Poeppel

Idsardi

Wassenhove

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

394

371

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“…Beyond the semantic information contained in speech, this acoustical signal provides a wealth of socially important information. For example, the human voice provides information regarding who is speaking, a highly salient perceptual feature that has been described as an "auditory face" (1). From the earliest stages of development, human listeners are extremely sensitive to the different voices in their environment (2), reflecting the importance of this social cue to human interaction and communication.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural circuits underlying mother’s voice perception predict social communication abilities in children

Abrams

Chen

Odriozola

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The human voice is a critical social cue, and listeners are extremely sensitive to the voices in their environment. One of the most salient voices in a child's life is mother's voice: Infants discriminate their mother's voice from the first days of life, and this stimulus is associated with guiding emotional and social function during development. Little is known regarding the functional circuits that are selectively engaged in children by biologically salient voices such as mother's voice or whether this brain activity is related to children's social communication abilities. We used functional MRI to measure brain activity in 24 healthy children (mean age, 10.2 y) while they attended to brief (<1 s) nonsense words produced by their biological mother and two female control voices and explored relationships between speech-evoked neural activity and social function. Compared to female control voices, mother's voice elicited greater activity in primary auditory regions in the midbrain and cortex; voice-selective superior temporal sulcus (STS); the amygdala, which is crucial for processing of affect; nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex of the reward circuit; anterior insula and cingulate of the salience network; and a subregion of fusiform gyrus associated with face perception. The strength of brain connectivity between voice-selective STS and reward, affective, salience, memory, and face-processing regions during mother's voice perception predicted social communication skills. Our findings provide a novel neurobiological template for investigation of typical social development as well as clinical disorders, such as autism, in which perception of biologically and socially salient voices may be impaired.

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“…A further advantage of the generated battery is the availability of multiple sound categories; in particular human vocalizations and non-vocalizations. Prior studies provide evidence that different object categories may engage distinct brain networks [7,18,29], including the possibility of differential responses within the amygdala as a function of emotional valence [8]. Ongoing investigations by our group are addressing the issue of categorical discrimination and the impact of emotional valence.…”

Section: Short-duration Emotional Sound Batterymentioning

confidence: 91%

“…While the visual modality has been studied in extensive detail, comparatively less is known concerning the auditory modality. To date, auditory research has largely focused on the emotional attributes of speech prosody and music [1][2][3][4][5][6], with only a few studies using either environmental sounds or non-linguistic vocalizations [7][8][9][10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[11] for a recent discussion of this issue). The second objective was to assess whether human vocalizations of the above emotional valences, similarly to facial expressions, constitute a distinct category of emotionally potent auditory stimuli, as has been proposed by Belin et al [7]. To do this, it was necessary to contrast ratings from human vocalizations with their non-vocalization counterparts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emotional Pre-eminence of Human Vocalizations

et al. 2008

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Human vocalizations (HV), as well as environmental sounds, convey a wide range of information, including emotional expressions. The latter have been relatively rarely investigated, and, in particular, it is unclear if duration-controlled non-linguistic HV sequences can reliably convey both positive and negative emotional information. The aims of the present psychophysical study were: (i) to generate a battery of duration-controlled and acoustically controlled extreme valence stimuli, and (ii) to compare the emotional impact of HV with that of other environmental sounds. A set of 144 HV and other environmental sounds was selected to cover emotionally positive, negative, and neutral values. Sequences of 2 s duration were rated on Likert scales by 16 listeners along three emotional dimensions (arousal, intensity, and valence) and two non-emotional dimensions (confidence in identifying the sound source and perceived loudness). The 2 s stimuli were reliably perceived as emotionally positive, negative or neutral. We observed a linear relationship between intensity and arousal ratings and a ''boomerangshaped'' intensity-valence distribution, as previously reported for longer, duration-variable stimuli. In addition, the emotional intensity ratings for HV were higher than for other environmental sounds, suggesting that HV constitute a characteristic class of emotional auditory stimuli. In addition, emotionally positive HV were more readily identified than other sounds, and emotionally negative stimuli, irrespective of their source, were perceived as louder than their positive and neutral counterparts. In conclusion, HV are a distinct emotional category of environmental sounds and they retain this emotional preeminence even when presented for brief periods.

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Thinking the voice: neural correlates of voice perception

Cited by 722 publications

References 82 publications

Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics

Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics

Neural circuits underlying mother’s voice perception predict social communication abilities in children

Emotional Pre-eminence of Human Vocalizations

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