Data gathered in the field of the experimental social psychology have shown that it is more difficult to recognize a person through his/her voice than through his/her face and that false alarms (FA) are produced more in voice than in face recognition. Furthermore, some neuropsychological investigations have suggested that in patients with damage to the right anterior temporal lobe (ATL) the number of FA could be higher for voice than for face recognition.

In the present study we assessed FA during recognition of famous people from faces and voices in patients with unilateral ATL tumours and in normal participants tested after anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tCDS), over the left or right ATL. The number of FA was significantly higher in patients with right than in those with left temporal tumours on both face and voice familiarity. Furthermore, lesion side did not differentially affect patient's sensitivity or response criterion when recognizing famous faces, but influenced both these measures on a voice recognition task. In fact, in this condition patients with right temporal tumours showed a lower sensitivity index and a lower response criterion than those with left-sided lesions. In normal subjects, the greater right sided involvement in voice than in face processing was confirmed by the observation that right ATL anodal stimulation significantly increased voice but only marginally influenced face sensitivity. This asymmetry between face and voice processing in the right hemisphere could be due to the greater complexity of voice processing and to the difficulty of forming stable and well-structured representations, allowing to evaluate if a presented voice matches or not with an already known voice.

在实验社会心理学领域收集的数据表明，通过他/她的声音比通过他/她的脸更难识别一个人，并且语音比面部识别更容易产生误报（FA）。此外，一些神经心理学研究表明，在右前颞叶 (ATL) 受损的患者中，语音的 FA 数量可能高于面部识别。

在本研究中，我们在从单侧 ATL 肿瘤患者和在左侧或右侧 ATL 上进行阳极经颅直流电刺激 (tCDS) 后测试的正常参与者的面部和声音中识别名人的过程中评估了 FA。在面部和声音熟悉度方面，右侧颞部肿瘤患者的 FA 数量显着高于左侧颞部肿瘤患者。此外，在识别著名面孔时，病变侧并没有对患者的敏感性或反应标准产生不同的影响，但会影响语音识别任务中的这两项指标。事实上，在这种情况下，右侧颞部肿瘤患者的敏感性指数和反应标准低于左侧病变患者。在正常受试者中，右侧 ATL 阳极刺激显着增加声音但仅轻微影响面部敏感性的观察证实了右侧声音比面部处理更大。右半球人脸和语音处理之间的这种不对称性可能是由于语音处理更加复杂，并且难以形成稳定且结构良好的表示，从而允许评估呈现的语音是否与已知语音匹配。