Neurocognitive studies of human vocal communication

人类声音交流的神经认知研究

• 批准号: RGPIN-2022-04363
• 负责人: Pell, Marc
• 金额: $ 4.01万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=749596
• 关键词: Neurocognitive; studies; human; vocal; communication

As we talk to another person, how does our brain respond to a speaker's tone of voice over time to derive different types of meaning? For instance, how do we interpret a speaker's emotions, their attitudes, or their confidence level based on how they express themselves through their voice? And how does the brain make sense of a communicative situation based on how another person speaks (their vocal expression) and what they are saying (the linguistic message)? Changes in the pitch, loudness, and quality of a person's voice convey a variety of meanings during interpersonal communication and fundamentally affect how we relate to one another. Our ability to engage in complex vocal behaviour is quintessentially human, and arguably at the root of our success as a species, and yet we are limited in our knowledge of how vocal expressions are processed in the brain. The goal of this research is to shed light on the unique human subsystem for vocal communication; we will demonstrate how people make sense of a speaker's tone of voice in everyday situations involving spoken language and relate these details to functions and structures of the human brain. Our studies probe these questions by investigating how adult listeners evaluate the emotional and social significance of vocal expressions and make decisions based on voice-related speech cues. We will perform experiments in which vocal expressions convey the speaker's emotions (e.g., happy, sad), their confidence level (e.g., confident, doubtful), or in which speakers use vocal expressions to alert the listener that they mean something different than what they are saying (e.g., innuendo). We use a range of methods in our experiments: we ask listeners to judge utterances produced in different ways to determine what impressions they create, and we conduct acoustic analyses to describe their physical form. Many of our studies present utterances as we record electrical activity or blood flow in a listener's brain, to determine what mental operations act on a speaker's tone of voice and what brain systems are involved. This work will give us new details about how people understand another person's goals and intentions in light of how a speaker uses their voice. The impacts and potential applications of our work are many. The knowledge we create will inspire scientists in several intersecting fields, such as neuroscience, psychology, and engineering, to undertake new work that refines perspectives about human interpersonal behaviour. By demonstrating how people use tone of voice in everyday situations, speech technologies that rely on human-machine interactions (e.g., Siri, Alexa) may be vastly improved to the benefit of society. Knowledge of how the brain is involved in complex forms of "social communication" will also help clinical scientists to design intervention strategies for individuals with social communication difficulties (e.g., people with autism spectrum disorders) with positive health benefits.

当我们与另一个人交谈时，我们的大脑如何随着时间的推移对说话者的语调做出反应，从而得出不同类型的含义？例如，我们如何根据说话者通过声音表达自己的方式来解读他们的情绪、态度或信心水平？大脑是如何根据另一个人的说话方式（他们的声音表达）和他们所说的话（语言信息）来理解交际情境的？一个人声音的音高、音量和质量的变化在人际交往中传达了各种各样的含义，并从根本上影响了我们彼此之间的关系。我们参与复杂声音行为的能力是典型的人类，可以说是我们作为一个物种成功的根源，但我们对大脑如何处理声音表达的知识有限。这项研究的目标是阐明独特的人类子系统的语音通信;我们将展示人们如何理解一个扬声器的语调在日常情况下，涉及口语和这些细节的功能和结构的人脑。 我们的研究通过调查成年听众如何评估声音表达的情感和社会意义，并根据与声音相关的语音线索做出决定来探索这些问题。我们将进行实验，其中声音表达传达说话者的情感（例如，快乐、悲伤），他们的信心水平（例如，自信的、怀疑的），或者说话者使用声音表达来提醒听者他们的意思与他们所说的不同（例如，影射）。我们在实验中使用了一系列的方法：我们要求听众判断以不同方式产生的话语，以确定它们产生了什么样的印象，我们进行声学分析来描述它们的物理形式。我们的许多研究都是通过记录听者大脑中的电活动或血流来呈现话语，以确定说话者的语调和大脑系统所涉及的心理操作。这项工作将为我们提供关于人们如何根据说话者如何使用他们的声音来理解另一个人的目标和意图的新细节。我们工作的影响和潜在应用是多方面的。我们创造的知识将激励神经科学、心理学和工程学等多个交叉领域的科学家开展新的工作，完善人类人际行为的观点。通过演示人们在日常情况下如何使用语调，依赖于人机交互的语音技术（例如，Siri，Alexa）可能会大大改善，以造福社会。对大脑如何参与复杂形式的“社会交流”的了解也将有助于临床科学家为有社会交流困难的个体设计干预策略（例如，患有自闭症谱系障碍的人），具有积极的健康益处。