Ultra-fast brain and behavioural categorisation of voices

How short can an auditory segment be in order to be correctly categorized as a voice? Does our brain discriminate against human voices even when we do not perceive them? In our study, we investigate the time limits in detecting human voice among other sounds. More precisely, we are testing participants in a behavioral and electroencephalography experiment to explore the link between perceptual voice discrimination and voice selectivity in the brain. We relied on Fast Periodic Auditory Stimulation (FPAS) oddball paradigm that has proven efficient to disclose voice categorization in an objective, direct, fast and automatic way. Participants listened to sequences, consisting of human voices and musical instruments samples matched for low-level features, such as harmonic to noise ratio (HNR) and pitch. Preliminary results suggest that the brain is able to show voice selective response at an unexpected fast presentation rate. We are now collecting more participants in order to determine the link between brain and behavior for voice categorization