(Credit: Arthur-studio10/Shutterstock) Good news for anyone who enjoys singing, or being sarcastic — or really, just talking in general. Scientists have precisely mapped, and now better understand, the part of the brain that allows you to do what you do: change the pitch of your voice to hit notes or emphasize certain words. The work, by a team of neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco, appears today in the journal Cell, and specifically looked at how a brain region called the bilateral dorsal laryngeal motor cortex (dLMC) controlled the larynx, or voice box.
While we have a lot in common with our primate cousins, humans are unique among them in our ability to modulate our vocal pitches. This means not just that we can hit the high notes when we want to, but that we can emphasize certain words in sentences, subtly altering overall meaning.
The human larynx. ...
