These findings suggest that training which taxes attention, memory, and production but is not perceptually taxing may be a way to boost neural encoding of sound and auditory pattern detection in individuals with poor auditory skills. 🧵6/6

However, voice actors didn’t show advantage in fine sound discrimination, which was instead linked to musical experience, suggesting that low-level auditory processing can only be enhanced by demanding perceptual training. 🧵5/6

We found that the consistency of neural sound encoding, prosody perception, and musical phrase perception are enhanced in voice actors, suggesting that a range of neural and behavioural auditory processing enhancements can result from training which lacks fine perceptual precision. 🧵4/6

We compared voice actors and a group of non-actors matched in musical training and assessed their neural encoding of pitch 🧠 , as well as their prosody 💬, music 🎵, and sound perception 🔉. 🧵3/6

Professional 🎙️voice actors 🎙️ exaggerate prosodic patterns to convey emotion, character or accents, drawing upon auditory attention, memory, and accurate sound production, but not fine perceptual precision. 🧵2/6

This supports the idea that the brain doesn’t solely map physical locations but also structures abstract knowledge in a similar way. Our findings take this a step further, revealing that spatial neural resources are not just engaged but necessary for this kind of mental organization. 🧵4/4

A second experiment showed that when spatial thinking was disrupted, people struggled to mentally navigate sound, indicating that the brain’s navigation system isn’t just involved—it’s essential for this process. 🧵3/4

When participants imagined changes in sound, like a pitch rising or falling, or a note getting longer or shorter, their brains showed grid-like activity in the entorhinal cortex, the same neural pattern used for physical navigation. 🧵2/4