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Abstract:
The recent work on speech and vocal sound processing by the human brain finds itself at a crossroads with the studies in non-human primates on the neurobiological basis of vocal communication. Speech is a recent evolutionary adaptation, so direct animal homologs of the neural systems supporting speech perception are not expected. However, vocal expressions are richly informative for many social animals. Thus, the interest in how the human brain is processing the speaker‘s identity and affective aspects of the human voice, including the stimulus-bound aspects of speech, may be approached from an evolutionary perspective. From the other side, comparative biologists have started to close the gap between animal and human data by using the same noninvasive imaging techniques as those applied to the human brain, to study the brains of animals. Relying on the same techniques facilitates cross-species comparisons, and provides links to invasive studies of the brain processes at the neuronal level
. In this chapter, we consider how the brains of primates analyze the features in vocal sounds, focusing in particular on the correspondence between the auditory cortex processes in the brains of monkeys, apes and man.
