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Voice-selective areas in human auditory cortex

Nature volume 403, pages 309–312 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The human voice contains in its acoustic structure a wealth of information on the speaker's identity and emotional state which we perceive with remarkable ease and accuracy1,2,3. Although the perception of speaker-related features of voice plays a major role in human communication, little is known about its neural basis4,5,6,7. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging in human volunteers, that voice-selective regions can be found bilaterally along the upper bank of the superior temporal sulcus (STS). These regions showed greater neuronal activity when subjects listened passively to vocal sounds, whether speech or non-speech, than to non-vocal environmental sounds. Central STS regions also displayed a high degree of selectivity by responding significantly more to vocal sounds than to matched control stimuli, including scrambled voices and amplitude-modulated noise. Moreover, their response to stimuli degraded by frequency filtering paralleled the subjects' behavioural performance in voice-perception tasks that used these stimuli. The voice-selective areas in the STS may represent the counterpart of the face-selective areas in human visual cortex8,9; their existence sheds new light on the functional architecture of the human auditory cortex.

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Figure 1: Experiment 1.
Figure 2: Experiment 2.
Figure 3: Experiment 3.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Milot, P. Bermudez, M. Bouffard, C. Hurst, A. Cormier, G. Leroux, V. Petre and J. Fiedsend for assistance in data acquisition and analysis, T. Paus, A. Evans, M.-H. Grosbras, I. Lussier, J. Hillenbrand, R. Hoge, G. Legoualher, M.-C. Masure, P. Neelin, K. Worsley and Y. Samson for advice, and N. Kanwisher for seminal discussion. This work was supported by France-Télécom, MRC (Canada), McDonnel-Pew, INSERM-FRSQ and NSERC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuropsychology/Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute,

    Pascal Belin, Robert J. Zatorre & Philippe Lafaille

  2. Psychology Department and,

    Pierre Ahad

  3. McConnel Brain Imaging Center, McGill University , Montréal, H3A 2B4, Québec, Canada

    Bruce Pike

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  1. Pascal Belin
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Correspondence to Pascal Belin.

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Belin, P., Zatorre, R., Lafaille, P. et al. Voice-selective areas in human auditory cortex. Nature 403, 309–312 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35002078

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