Sound-Induced Activity in Voice-Sensitive Cortex Predicts Voice Memory Ability

Rebecca Watson (1) , Marianne Latinus (2, 1) , Patricia E G Bestelmeyer (3) , Frances Crabbe (1) , Pascal C Belin (4, 1)

1 Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology
2 UT - Université de Tours
3 Bangor University
4 INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone

The "temporal voice areas" (TVAs; Belin et al., 2000) of the human brain show greater neu-ronal activity in response to human voices than to other categories of non-vocal sounds. However, a direct link betweenTVA activity and voice perception behavior has not yet been established. Here we show that a functional magnetic resonance imaging measure of activity in the TVAs predicts individual performance at a separately administered voice memory test. This relation holds when general sound memory ability is taken into account. These findings provide the first evidence that the TVAs are specifically involved in voice cognition.

Mots clés: temporal voice areas; memory; identity; paralinguistic processing

Domaines: Sciences cognitives; Neurobiologie

Rebecca Watson, Marianne Latinus, Patricia E G Bestelmeyer, Frances Crabbe, Pascal C Belin. Sound-Induced Activity in Voice-Sensitive Cortex Predicts Voice Memory Ability. Frontiers in Psychology, 2012, 3, pp.89. ⟨10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00089⟩. ⟨hal-02006948⟩