Voice Neurocognition Laboratory (VNL)
The human voice not only carries speech,
it is also an auditory face rich in precious information on the speaker.
Normal listeners possess sophisticated
voice cognition abilities for extracting and processing this speaker-related information.
Even from brief vocalization, we can determine the gender, approximate age of the speaker
and his/her affective state, as well as more subtle cues such as how attractive or
trustworthy a voice sounds. Voice cognition abilities play a crucial role in social interactions.
But although they develop much earlier than speech perception in infants, and are present in a
number of non-human species, little is known on their cerebral bases.
The Voice Neurocognition Laboratory aims to understand the cerebral architecture underlying voice cognition.
Experiments performed in the VNL use audio morphing and high-resolution measures of
cerebral activity using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Hearing voices activates a bilateral "temporal voice area" (TVA) in the brain, located in most individuals
along the middle part of the superior temporal sulcus (STS). The TVA is analogous to the face-sensitive
areas of visual cortex. The TVA constitutes a voice-selective stage of cerebral processing from which vocal
information processing may be organized in several, functionally distinct, cortical pathways.
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