Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2025
04:32
Sound Source Localization Testing in Single-sided Deafness Following Bone Conduction Intervention
Published on: December 20, 2024
366
Bone conduction facilitates self-other voice discrimination
Pavo Orepic1, Oliver Alan Kannape1,2, Nathan Faivre3
1Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute and Brain Mind Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.
Royal Society Open Science
|February 23, 2023
Summary
Hearing your own voice sounds strange due to missing bone conduction. Adding vibrotactile stimulation improved self-voice identification, showing voice perception is multi-modal.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Acoustics
Background:
- Self-voice perception is crucial for self-consciousness but poorly understood.
- Recordings sound unfamiliar due to the absence of bone conduction during natural voice perception.
- This auditory-tactile discrepancy has hindered self-voice research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of bone conduction in self-voice perception.
- To determine how vibrotactile stimulation influences self-voice identification.
- To explore the interplay between acoustic cues and familiarity in distinguishing one's own voice.
Main Methods:
- Three studies were conducted using voice morphing and psychophysical methods.
- Experimental self-voice stimuli were augmented with bone-conducted vibrotactile stimulation.
- Stimuli were presented via bone conduction and air conduction for comparison.
Main Results:
- Bone conduction significantly improved self-other voice discrimination compared to air conduction.
- Vocal differences enhanced general voice discrimination.
- Self-voices were more confused with familiar than unfamiliar voices, irrespective of acoustic similarity.
Conclusions:
- Concomitant vibrotactile stimulation enhances auditory self-identification.
- Self-voice perception is a fundamentally multi-modal construct, integrating auditory and tactile information.
- Understanding these multi-modal aspects is key to advancing research on self-consciousness.
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