Recognizing people by their voices: An fMRI-study of healthy people and patients after stroke

Theoretical Background: The recognition of a familiar voice is an accomplishment of the human brain that allows us to reliably identify familiar people without seeing them in person. Of note, human voice recognition is a distinct speech process and appears not to be connected to linguistic or semantic language comprehension. Whereas language comprehension and speech functions are regulated by the left hemisphere (Cabeza & Nyberg, 2000), Belin and Zatorre (2003) found a right hemisphere dominance for voice recognition processes. More specifically, the right anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and its connecti…