title: Developmental phonagnosia: Neural correlates and a behavioral marker.
abstract: A 20-year old female, AN, with no history of neurological events or detectable lesions, was markedly poorer than controls at identifying her most familiar celebrity voices. She was normal at face recognition and in discriminating which of two speakers uttered a particular sentence. She evidences normal fMRI sensitivity for human speech and non-speech sounds. AN, and two other phonagnosics, were unable to imagine the voices of highly familiar individuals. A region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was differentially activated in controls when imagining familiar celebrity voices compared to imagining non-voice sounds. AN evidenced no differential activation in this area, which has been termed a person identity semantic system. Rather than a deficit in the representation of voice-individuating cues, AN may be unable to associate those cues to the identity of a familiar person. In this respect, the deficit in developmental phonagnosia may bear a striking parallel to developmental prosopagnosia.
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States.
authors.forename: Xiaokun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States. Electronic address: bieder@usc.edu.
authors.forename: Irving
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Biederman
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States.
authors.forename: Bryan E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Shilowich
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States.
authors.forename: Sarah B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Herald
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States.
authors.forename: Ori
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Amir
authors.affiliation: University of Southern California, United States.
authors.forename: Naomi E
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Allen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003463:Cues; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019018:Imagery, Psychotherapy; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013060:Speech; D014831:Voice; D066127:White Matter; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Celebrity voice recognition; Person identity node; Phonagnosia; Prosopagnosia; Temporal voice area; Ventromedial prefrontal cortex; Voice discrimination; Voice imagination; Voice individuating cues (VICs); Voice recognition; White matter tracts; fMRI