Sheffield Cognition and Neuroimaging Laboratory (SCANLab), Academic Clinical Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, University of Sheffield, The Longley Centre, Norwood Grange Drive, Sheffield S5 7JT, United Kingdom.
Academic Radiology, Department of Human Metabolism, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, University of Sheffield, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JF, United Kingdom.
Neuroimage. 2015 Jan 15;105:208-14. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.056. Epub 2014 Oct 29.
Discerning a speaker's gender from their voice is a basic and crucial aspect of human communication. Voice pitch height, the perceptual correlate of fundamental frequency, is higher in females and provides a cue for gender discrimination. However, male and female voices are also differentiated by multiple other spectral and temporal characteristics, including mean formant frequency and spectral flux. The robust perceptual segregation of male and female voices is thought to result from processing the combination of discriminating features, which in neural terms may correspond to early sound object analysis occurring in non-primary auditory cortex. However, the specific mechanism for gender perception has been unclear. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that discrete sites in non-primary auditory cortex are differentially activated by male and female voices, with female voices consistently evoking greater activation in the upper bank of the superior temporal sulcus and posterior superior temporal plane. This finding was observed at the individual subject-level in all 24 subjects. The neural response was highly specific: no auditory regions were more activated by male than female voices. Further, the activation associated with female voices was 1) larger than can be accounted for by a sole effect of fundamental frequency, 2) not due to psychological attribution of female gender and 3) unaffected by listener gender. These results demonstrate that male and female voices are represented as distinct auditory objects in the human brain, with the mechanism for gender discrimination being a gender-dependent activation-level cue in non-primary auditory cortex.
从声音辨别说话者的性别是人类交流的一个基本且至关重要的方面。音高高度是基频的感知相关物，女性的音高高度较高，这为性别辨别提供了线索。然而，男性和女性的声音也通过多个其他谱和时域特征来区分，包括平均共振峰频率和频谱通量。男性和女性声音的强大感知分离被认为是由于对区分特征的组合进行处理的结果，从神经学的角度来看，这可能对应于非初级听觉皮层中早期的声音对象分析。然而，性别感知的具体机制尚不清楚。在这里，我们使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）表明，非初级听觉皮层中的离散部位会被男性和女性的声音激活，女性声音会一致地在颞上回的上沿和后颞上平面引起更大的激活。在所有 24 名受试者中，都在个体受试者水平上观察到了这一发现。神经反应具有高度的特异性：没有听觉区域比男性声音更能被女性声音激活。此外，与女性声音相关的激活）1）大于仅由基频的单一影响所解释的程度，2）不是由于对女性性别的心理归因，3）不受听众性别的影响。这些结果表明，男性和女性的声音在人类大脑中被表示为不同的听觉对象，性别歧视的机制是在非初级听觉皮层中基于性别激活水平的线索。
