| I think that most of what we can infer about the functional organisation of the human auditory cortical system comes from the neuroanatomy and neurophysiological studies of the Macaque brain. The problem with this is that vocalisation isn't an important form of communication in this species. Even if we can assume similarities b/w the functional organisation of the macaque and human (auditory) brain, functional specialisation must diverge in the two species at, or before, the point where speech-specific processing begins in humans. Don't know about the closest animal model to human vocalisation. If you're looking for a good vocal match, it seems to me a parrot does a pretty good job, not only because the vocalisation is intelligible, but also because the sound quality is disturbingly similar to human speech. But I don't think this is what you were after? Jose On 2 Mar 2011, at 08:33, Pete Howell wrote:
_______________________________________ Dr José Ignacio Alcántara Department of Experimental Psychology University of Cambridge Downing Street Cambridge, UK CB2 3EB Phone: +44 (0)1223 764412 Fax: +44 (0)1223 333564 Fellow of Fitzwilliam College Storey's Way Cambridge, UK CB3 0DG Phone: +44 (0)1223 472126 P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail |