Neural tracking of the fundamental frequency of the voice: The effect of voice characteristics

Traditional electrophysiological methods to study temporal auditory processing of the fundamental frequency of the voice (f0) often use unnaturally repetitive stimuli. In this study, we investigated f0 processing of meaningful continuous speech. EEG responses evoked by stories in quiet were analysed with a novel method based on linear modelling that characterizes the neural tracking of the f0. We studied both the strength and the spatio‐temporal properties of the f0‐tracking response. Moreover, different samples of continuous speech (six stories by four speakers: two male and two female) were used to investigate the effect of voice characteristics on the f0 response. The results indicated that response strength is inversely related to f0 frequency and rate of f0 change throughout the story. As a result, the male‐narrated stories in this study (low and steady f0) evoked stronger f0‐tracking compared to female‐narrated stories (high and variable f0), for which many responses were not significant. The spatio‐temporal analysis revealed that f0‐tracking response generators were not fixed in the brainstem but were voice‐dependent as well. Voices with high and variable f0 evoked subcortically dominated responses with a latency between 7 and 12 ms. Voices with low and steady f0 evoked responses that are both subcortically (latency of 13–15 ms) and cortically (latency of 23–26 ms) generated, with the right primary auditory cortex as a likely cortical source. Finally, additional experiments revealed that response strength greatly improves for voices with strong higher harmonics, which is particularly useful to boost the small responses evoked by voices with high f0. Flemish stories narrated by different voices were presented to healthy young volunteers. Brain activity was measured with EEG and analysed using linear decoding/encoding to study the effect of voice characteristics on auditory f0 tracking responses. Responses were larger and had more cortical contributions when the fundamental frequency of the narrator's voice was low and steady (typically male voices). For voices with high and more variable fundamental frequency (typically female voices), the responses were smaller and mainly subcortically generated.