Grossmann, Tobias and Oberecker, R. and Koch, S.P. and Friederici, A.D. (2010) The developmental origins of voice processing in the human brain. Neuron 65 (6), pp. 852-858. ISSN 0896-6273.
Abstract
In human adults, voices are processed in specialized brain regions in superior temporal cortices. We examined the development of this cortical organization during infancy by using near-infrared spectroscopy. In experiment 1, 7-month-olds but not 4-month-olds showed increased responses in left and right superior temporal cortex to the human voice when compared to nonvocal sounds, suggesting that voice-sensitive brain systems emerge between 4 and 7 months of age. In experiment 2, 7-month-old infants listened to words spoken with neutral, happy, or angry prosody. Hearing emotional prosody resulted in increased responses in a voice-sensitive region in the right hemisphere. Moreover, a region in right inferior frontal cortex taken to serve evaluative functions in the adult brain showed particular sensitivity to happy prosody. The pattern of findings suggests that temporal regions specialize in processing voices very early in development and that, already in infancy, emotions differentially modulate voice processing in the right hemisphere.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Published version available via Gold Open Access at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2852650/?tool=pmcentrez |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Feb 2011 11:37 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 16:54 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/3047 |
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