Sound-induced activity in voice-sensitive cortex predicts voice memory ability

Abstract

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 activ-ity in theTVAs 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 theTVAs are specifically involved in voice cognition. © 2012 Watson, Latinus, Bestelmeyer, Crabbe and Belin.