Recognizing the identity of others by their voice is an important skill for social interactions. To date, it remains controversial which parts of the brain are critical structures for this skill. Based on neuroimaging findings, standard models of person-identity recognition suggest that the right temporal lobe is the hub for voice-identity recognition. Neuropsychological case studies, however, reported selective deficits of voice-identity recognition in patients predominantly with right inferior parietal lobe lesions. Here, our aim was to work towards resolving the discrepancy between neuroimaging studies and neuropsychological case studies to find out which brain structures are critical for voice-identity recognition in humans. We performed a voxel-based lesion-behaviour mapping study in a cohort of patients (n = 58) with unilateral focal brain lesions. The study included a comprehensive behavioural test battery on voice-identity recognition of newly learned (voice-name, voice-face association learning) and familiar voices (famous voice recognition) as well as visual (face-identity recognition) and acoustic control tests (vocal-pitch and vocal-timbre discrimination). The study also comprised clinically established tests (neuropsychological assessment, audiometry) and high-resolution structural brain images. The three key findings were: (i) a strong association between voice-identity recognition performance and right posterior/mid temporal and right inferior parietal lobe lesions; (ii) a selective association between right posterior/mid temporal lobe lesions and voice-identity recognition performance when face-identity recognition performance was factored out; and (iii) an association of right inferior parietal lobe lesions with tasks requiring the association between voices and faces but not voices and names. The results imply that the right posterior/mid temporal lobe is an obligatory structure for voice-identity recognition, while the inferior parietal lobe is only a facultative component of voice-identity recognition in situations where additional face-identity processing is required.

中文翻译：

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语音身份识别的强制性和兼性大脑区域


通过声音识别他人的身份是社交互动的一项重要技能。迄今为止，大脑的哪些部分是这项技能的关键结构仍然存在争议。根据神经影像学研究结果，个人身份识别的标准模型表明，右颞叶是语音身份识别的枢纽。然而，神经心理学案例研究报告称，主要患有右顶下叶病变的患者存在选择性语音识别缺陷。在这里，我们的目标是努力解决神经影像学研究和神经心理学案例研究之间的差异，以找出哪些大脑结构对于人类语音身份识别至关重要。我们对一组患有单侧局灶性脑损伤的患者 ( n = 58) 进行了基于体素的损伤行为映射研究。该研究包括对新学习的语音身份识别（语音名称、语音面部关联学习）和熟悉的语音（著名语音识别）以及视觉（面部身份识别）和声音控制测试（音调和音色辨别）。该研究还包括临床建立的测试（神经心理学评估、听力测定）和高分辨率大脑结构图像。 三个关键发现是：（i）语音身份识别性能与右后/颞中叶和右顶下叶病变之间存在很强的相关性； (ii) 当排除面部身份识别性能时，右后/颞叶中部病变与语音身份识别性能之间存在选择性关联； (iii) 右顶下叶病变与需要声音和面部关联但不需要声音和姓名关联的任务相关。结果表明，右后/中颞叶是语音身份识别的必需结构，而下顶叶只是在需要额外的面部身份处理的情况下语音身份识别的临时组成部分。