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Fig.1. Some non-human animals that recognize the voices of familiar non-family members. A: vervet monkeys. B: baboons. C: elephants. declarative memory, subcortical structures modulating memory, motivation and emotion, frontal lobes organizing and integrating behaviors, and temporal lobes processing auditory patterns and selected auditory features all partici- pate (see Kreiman and Sidtis, 2011, for extended review). Although multiple cerebral structures play significant roles in processing familiar voices, studies of performance following brain lesions and in functional imaging give a role to the right cerebral hemisphere as a final common pathway for voice recognition, especially of familiar stimuli (e.g., Van Lancker et al., 1989; Neuner and Schweinberger, 2000; Belin et al., 2000; Latinus and Belin, 2011b; Gainotti, 2011). Consistent with right hemisphere participation in famil- iar voice perception and recognition, evidence suggests that familiar voices comprise distinctive, integral, heterogeneous patterns, which can be accessed as unique, holistically stored units. These integral patterns resist systematic decomposi- tion into bundles of separable features. Parameters like F0, timbre, and intensity—cornerstones of voice quality analy- sis—interfere with each other perceptually, such that irrele- vant, unattended variation on one parameter facilitates or interferes with listeners’ judgments of the other, depending on whether that irrelevant variation is or is not correlated chatter in a crowded room. From these several perspectives, we must conclude that it is the familiar voice pattern that plays the dominant role in animal biology and human culture (Sidtis and Kreiman, 2011). The brain behind the voice These findings suggest that there should be differences in the neuropsychological and cognitive processes involved in perceiving familiar versus unfamiliar voices. That is, if rec- ognizing a familiar voice is “basic” in some way, we might expect that there exist specific, efficient neuropsychological mechanisms to support this ability. Similarly, if unfamiliar voices are not important or salient stimuli, we might expect a messier set of processes to be engaged if and when we are forced to deal with them. In fact, a substantial number of studies point to such dif- ferences. Recognizing a familiar voice and discriminating among unfamiliar voices are dissociated neuropsychological abilities, meaning that either one can be independently dis- rupted by neurological damage, leaving the other entirely intact (Van Lancker and Kreiman, 1987). Familiar voices engage a large expanse of cerebral systems. Upon recognizing a familiar voice, parietal lobes establishing associations in Voices and Listeners 9