Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Formant interaction as a cue to vowel perception: a case report
1Division of Neuropsychology, Department of Disability Medicine, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. kaztanji@neurol.med.tohoku.ac.jp
Abstract:
Accumulating evidence indicates that cerebral processing of consonants and vowels is separable. It has been shown that disordered temporal acuity leads to disturbed consonant perception in cases with pure word deafness. In contrast, there has been no clear explanation of how vowel perception is impaired. We examined a patient with auditory agnosia, who showed a differential ability to identify the five Japanese vowels after bilateral cerebral lesions. He correctly identified the vowel [a] in more than 70% of auditory presentations, whereas he identified [i] in only about 30% of presentations. The difference between the first and second formant frequencies "F2-F1" and an artificially defined value "F1-(F2-F1)" for each vowel correlated significantly with the percentage of correct identifications. These findings support the hypothesis that vowel perception is based on formant interactions.
More Related Videos
09:09Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
05:48Memorization-Based Training and Testing Paradigm for Robust Vocal Identity Recognition in Expressive Speech Using Event-Related Potentials Analysis
Published on: August 9, 2024
Related Concept Videos
The Cochlea
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same frequency...
Auditory Perception
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...
Facial Feedback Hypothesis
Non-Verbal Cues