BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    The developmental origins of voice processing in the human brain

    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.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    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

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    258Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item