Personally valued voices engage reward-motivated behaviour and brain responses.

ABSTRACT: Humans often attach notions of value to hearing the voices of specific loved ones, yet there is sparse scientific evidence supporting these claims. We present three experiments-two behavioural and one neuroimaging functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-that tested whether personally-valued voices engage reward-motivated behaviour and associated brain responses. Using novel voice incentive delay tasks, we show that listeners respond faster in anticipation of hearing the speaking voice of their music idol than when anticipating an unfamiliar voice or a pure tone (Experiment 1). A second behavioural experiment indicated that familiarity alone was insufficient to engage stronger reward-motivated behaviour in comparison with an unfamiliar identity (Experiment 2). These behavioural pattern

SUBMITTER: Kanber E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12366989 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature