Familiar Voices

A recent study published in Neuropsychologia tested the degree to which one's familiarity with a voice impacts how one processes that voice.

More specifically, the researchers played audio clips of former German chancellor Angela Merkel alongside two unfamiliar female voices while tracking the brain activity of those listening to the clips.

The study found that the familiar voice, that of Merkel, was processed in a different part of the brain from the unfamiliar voices, and that it arrived in meaningful, conscious form in the non-audio portions of the brain, post-processing, more rapidly than the other voices.