6/30/2009 PERMALINK
Brain section multitasks to handle both phonetics and decision-making
A front portion of the brain that handles tasks like decision-making also helps decipher different phonetic sounds, according to new Brown University research. This section of the brain - the left inferior frontal sulcus - treats different pronunciations of the same speech sound the same way. This solves the mystery of how the brain is able to equate sounds that can sound radically different when spoken by different people.