Implicitly perceived vocal attractiveness modules prefrontal cortex activity
Introduction
- Vocal attractiveness
o informs phenotypic things (health, reproductive fitness)
o linked to increased sexual partners and decreased age of first sexual contact
o credited more socially favourable traits e.g likeability
o ‘’what sounds beautiful is good’’ stereotype
- Behavioural gender-independent mechanisms of vocal beauty
o Morphing voices – the more composites, the more attractive sounding
o Independent acoustic contributors to attractiveness – distance to mean and
spectrotemporal regularity (harmonics to noise ratio)
Methods
- fMRI whilst participants listed to vocal sounds produced by different voices whilst
performing distraction task of tone detection
- voices were independently rated for attractiveness
Findings
- Areas
o despite no linguistic content and tone detection, perceived vocal attractiveness
correlated with activity in a range of networks – higher level auditory cortex
and inferior prefrontal regions
o less attractive voices = greater activity in voice-sensitive areas (bilateral
superior temporal sulci/gyri, respond more to vocal sounds) and right inferior
fusiform gyrus (in Broca’s area linked to speech)
o more attractive voices = increased activation in bilateral fusiform gyrus (helps
in face processing) and left midoccipital regions
- Face and voice
o fMRI findings from this study and facial attractiveness studies could suggest
FG and IFG respond to attractiveness in general, engaging a broad neural
network
o daily parallel processing of face and voice
reciprocal functional connects suggests auditory input is coupled or
translated into visual representation
- Acoustic contributors
o The more distinct or different a voice from the mean (stereotype) the more
unattractive and more bilateral STS/STG activation
Speculated like faces, voices coded against prototype
o Irregular texture, unattractive and bilateral STS/STG activation
texture-sensitive regions are activated parametrically within the
category of human non- speech vocalizations
Conclusions
Introduction
- Vocal attractiveness
o informs phenotypic things (health, reproductive fitness)
o linked to increased sexual partners and decreased age of first sexual contact
o credited more socially favourable traits e.g likeability
o ‘’what sounds beautiful is good’’ stereotype
- Behavioural gender-independent mechanisms of vocal beauty
o Morphing voices – the more composites, the more attractive sounding
o Independent acoustic contributors to attractiveness – distance to mean and
spectrotemporal regularity (harmonics to noise ratio)
Methods
- fMRI whilst participants listed to vocal sounds produced by different voices whilst
performing distraction task of tone detection
- voices were independently rated for attractiveness
Findings
- Areas
o despite no linguistic content and tone detection, perceived vocal attractiveness
correlated with activity in a range of networks – higher level auditory cortex
and inferior prefrontal regions
o less attractive voices = greater activity in voice-sensitive areas (bilateral
superior temporal sulci/gyri, respond more to vocal sounds) and right inferior
fusiform gyrus (in Broca’s area linked to speech)
o more attractive voices = increased activation in bilateral fusiform gyrus (helps
in face processing) and left midoccipital regions
- Face and voice
o fMRI findings from this study and facial attractiveness studies could suggest
FG and IFG respond to attractiveness in general, engaging a broad neural
network
o daily parallel processing of face and voice
reciprocal functional connects suggests auditory input is coupled or
translated into visual representation
- Acoustic contributors
o The more distinct or different a voice from the mean (stereotype) the more
unattractive and more bilateral STS/STG activation
Speculated like faces, voices coded against prototype
o Irregular texture, unattractive and bilateral STS/STG activation
texture-sensitive regions are activated parametrically within the
category of human non- speech vocalizations
Conclusions
