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My Voice or Yours? An Electrophysiological Study

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Abstract

This study examined the neural processes underlying own voice discrimination using electrophysiological methods. Event-related potentials were recorded while healthy subjects (n = 17) heard passively three oddball sequences composed of recordings of the French vowel/a/pronounced either by the participant her/himself or by two unknown persons. The results indicated that, although the mismatch negativity (MMN) displayed similar peak latency and amplitude in both conditions, the subsequent P3a clearly distinguished the two conditions since its amplitude was significantly smaller for own voice discrimination than for that of unknown voices. Moreover, the own voice discriminative response was associated with an early pre-MMN response. This early response involved a left inferior frontal component, the activity of which lasted throughout the time course of the discriminative response, which included both MMN and P3a.

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Acknowledgments

This study received financial support from the Fondation Thérèse et René Planiol and the Association des amis de Pierre Deniker. The authors thank Marie-Hélène Giard for comments on the manuscript and Doreen Raine for her help with the English text.

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  1. UMR INSERM U930, CNRS ERL 3106, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France

    Jérôme Graux, Marie Gomot, Sylvie Roux, Frédérique Bonnet-Brilhault, Vincent Camus & Nicole Bruneau

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  1. Jérôme Graux
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  2. Marie Gomot
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  3. Sylvie Roux
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Correspondence to Jérôme Graux.

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Graux, J., Gomot, M., Roux, S. et al. My Voice or Yours? An Electrophysiological Study. Brain Topogr 26, 72–82 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-012-0233-2

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