Apperceptive and Associative Forms of Phonagnosia

Human Recognition: The Utilization of Face, Voice, Name and Interactions-An Extended Editorial

The many stimulating contributions to this Special Issue of Brain Science focused on some basic issues of particular interest in current research, with emphasis on human recognition using faces, voices, and names [...].

Unveiling the development of human voice perception: Neurobiological mechanisms and pathophysiology

The human voice is a critical stimulus for the auditory system that promotes social connection, informs the listener about identity and emotion, and acts as the carrier for spoken language. Research on voice processing in adults has informed our understanding of the unique status of the human voice in the mature auditory cortex and provided potential explanations for mechanisms that underly voice selectivity and identity processing. There is evidence that voice perception undergoes developmental change starting in infancy and extending through early adolescence. While even young infants recognize the voice of their mother, there is an apparent protracted course of development to reach adult-like selectivity for human voice over other sound categories and recognition of other talkers by voice. Gaps in the literature do not allow for an exact mapping of this trajectory or an adequate description of how voice processing and its neural underpinnings abilities evolve. This review provides a comprehensive account of developmental voice processing research published to date and discusses how this evidence fits with and contributes to current theoretical models proposed in the adult literature. We discuss how factors such as cognitive development, neural plasticity, perceptual narrowing, and language acquisition may contribute to the development of voice processing and its investigation in children. We also review evidence of voice processing abilities in premature birth, autism spectrum disorder, and phonagnosia to examine where and how deviations from the typical trajectory of development may manifest.

Is Anosognosia for Left-Sided Hemiplegia Due to a Specific Self-Awareness Defect or to a Poorly Conscious Working Mode Typical of the Right Hemisphere?

This review aimed to evaluate whether the association between 'anosognosia for hemiplegia' and lesions of the right hemisphere points to a special self-awareness role of the right side of the brain, or could instead be due to a working mode typical of the right hemisphere. This latter viewpoint is consistent with a recently proposed model of human brain asymmetries that assumes that language lateralization in the left hemisphere might have increased the left hemisphere's level of consciousness and intentionality in comparison with the right hemisphere's less conscious and more automatic functioning. To assess these alternatives, I tried to ascertain whether anosognosia is greater for left-sided hemiplegia than for other disorders provoked by right brain lesions, or whether unawareness prevails in tasks more clearly related to the disruption of the right hemisphere's more automatic (and less conscious) functioning. Data consistent with the first alternative would support the existence of a specific link between anosognosia for hemiplegia and self-awareness, whereas data supporting the second option would confirm the model linking anosognosia to a poorly conscious working mode typical of the right hemisphere. Analysis results showed that the incidence of anosognosia of the highly automatic syndrome of unilateral neglect was greater than that concerning the unawareness of left hemiplegia, suggesting that anosognosia for left-sided hemiplegia might be due to the poorly conscious working mode typical of the right hemisphere.