AUTHOR=Trapeau Régis , Thoret Etienne , Belin Pascal 

TITLE=The Temporal Voice Areas are not “just” Speech Areas

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience

VOLUME=16

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2022.1075288

DOI=10.3389/fnins.2022.1075288

ISSN=1662-453X

ABSTRACT=<p>The Temporal Voice Areas (TVAs) respond more strongly to speech sounds than to non-speech vocal sounds, but does this make them Temporal “Speech” Areas? We provide a perspective on this issue by combining univariate, multivariate, and representational similarity analyses of fMRI activations to a balanced set of speech and non-speech vocal sounds. We find that while speech sounds activate the TVAs more than non-speech vocal sounds, which is likely related to their larger temporal modulations in syllabic rate, they do not appear to activate additional areas nor are they segregated from the non-speech vocal sounds when their higher activation is controlled. It seems safe, then, to continue calling these regions the Temporal Voice Areas.</p>