Effects of voice harmonic complexity on ERP responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback

Objective: The present study investigated the neural mechanisms of voice pitch control for different levels of harmonic complexity in the auditory feedback.

Methods: Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to+200 cents pitch perturbations in the auditory feedback of self-produced natural human vocalizations, complex and pure tone stimuli during active vocalization and passive listening conditions.

Results: During active vocal production, ERP amplitudes were largest in response to pitch shifts in the natural voice, moderately large for non-voice complex stimuli and smallest for the pure tones. However, during passive listening, neural responses were equally large for pitch shifts in voice and non-voice complex stimuli but still larger than that for pure tones.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that pitch change detection is facilitated for spectrally rich sounds such as natural human voice and non-voice complex stimuli compared with pure tones. Vocalization-induced increase in neural responses for voice feedback suggests that sensory processing of naturally-produced complex sounds such as human voice is enhanced by means of motor-driven mechanisms (e.g. efference copies) during vocal production.

Significance: This enhancement may enable the audio-vocal system to more effectively detect and correct for vocal errors in the feedback of natural human vocalizations to maintain an intended vocal output for speaking.