http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/
081110071240.htm Neuroimaging Of Brain Shows Who Spoke To A
Person And What Was Said
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Researchers have demonstrated that speech sounds and voices (such as
those in the audio waves depicted above) can be identified by means of a
unique 'neural fingerprint' in the listener's brain. (Credit:
iStockphoto)
ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2008) — Scientists from Maastricht University
have developed a method to look into the brain of a person and read out
who has spoken to him or her and what was said. With the help of
neuroimaging and data mining techniques the researchers mapped the brain
activity associated with the recognition of speech sounds and voices.

In their Science article "'Who' is Saying 'What'? Brain-Based Decoding
of Human Voice and Speech," the four authors demonstrate that speech
sounds and voices can be identified by means of a unique 'neural
fingerprint' in the listener's brain. In the future this new knowledge
could be used to improve computer systems for automatic speech and
speaker recognition.

Seven study subjects listened to three different speech sounds (the
vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/), spoken by three different people, while their
brain activity was mapped using neuroimaging techniques (fMRI). With the
help of data mining methods the researchers developed an algorithm to
translate this brain activity into unique patterns that determine the
identity of a speech sound or a voice. The various acoustic
characteristics of vocal cord vibrations (neural patterns) were found to
determine the brain activity.

Just like real fingerprints, these neural patterns are both unique and
specific: the neural fingerprint of a speech sound does not change if
uttered by somebody else and a speaker's fingerprint remains the same,
even if this person says something different.

Moreover, this study revealed that part of the complex sound-decoding
process takes place in areas of the brain previously just associated
with the early stages of sound processing. Existing neurocognitive
models assume that processing sounds actively involves different regions
of the brain according to a certain hierarchy: after a simple processing
in the auditory cortex the more complex analysis (speech sounds into
words) takes place in specialised regions of the brain. However, the
findings from this study imply a less hierarchal processing of speech
that is spread out more across the brain.

The research was partly funded by the Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research (NWO): Two of the four authors, Elia Formisano and
Milene Bonte carried out their research with an NWO grant (Vidi and
Veni). The data mining methods were developed during the PhD research of
Federico De Martino (doctoral thesis defended at Maastricht University
on 24 October 2008).

Journal reference:

1. Elia Formisano, Federico De Martino, Milene Bonte, Rainer Goebel.
"Who" is Saying "What"? Brain-Based Decoding of Human
Voice and Speech. Science, November 2008
Adapted from materials provided by NWO (Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research) <http://www.nwo.nl/> . Need to cite this story in
your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats: APA

MLA NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) (2008,
November 10). Neuroimaging Of Brain Shows Who Spoke To A Person And What
Was Said. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 13, 2008, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/11/081110071240.htm


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