if you ask evolutionary biologists when
did humans became humans some of them
will say that well at some point we
started standing on our feet became
biped and became the masters of our
environment others will say that because
our brain started growing much bigger
that were able to have much more complex
cognitive processes and others might
argue that it’s because we developed a
language that allowed us to evolve as a
species interestingly those three
phenomena are all connected we’re not
sure how or in which order but they are
all linked with the change of shape of
little bone in the back of your neck
that change the angle between our head
and our body that made that we were able
to stand upright but also for a brain to
evolve in the back and for Voicebox to
grow from 7 centimeters for primates to
11 and up to 17 centimeters for humans
and this is called add essence of the
land and the larynx is a site of your
voice when baby humans are born today
their larynx is not descended yet that
only happens at about 3 months old so
metaphorically each of us here I’ve
relived the evolution of our whole
specie and talking about babies when you
were starting to develop in your
mother’s womb the first sensation that
you had coming from the outside world
and only 3 weeks old when you’re about
the size of a shrimp we’re through the
tactile sensation coming from the
vibrations of your mother’s voice so as
we can see the human voice is quite
meaningful and important at the species
at the level of the species
at the level of the society this is how
we communicate and create bonds and at
the personal and interpersonal levels
with our voice which are much more than
words and data this is which we shall
basically who we are and our voice is
indiscernible from how other people see
us it is a mask that we were in society
but our relationship with our own voice
is far from obvious we rarely use our
voice for our self we use it as a gift
to give to others it is a how we touch
each other
it’s a dialectical grooming but what do
we think about our own voice so please
raise your hand if you don’t like the
sound of your voice when you hear it on
recording machine yeah thank you indeed
most people report not liking the sound
of their of their voice recording so
what does that mean let’s try to
understand that in the next 10 minutes
I’m a researcher at the MIT Media Lab
part of the Opera the Future group and
my my research focus is on the
relationship people have with their own
voice and with the voices of others I
study what we can learn from listening
to voices from the advice field from
neurology to biology cognitive sciences
linguistic and in our group we create
tools and experiences to help people
gain a better applied understanding of
their voice in order to reduce the
biases to become better listeners to
create more healthy relationship or just
to understand themselves better and this
really has to come with a holistic
approach on the voice because think
about all the applications and
implications that the voice might have
as we discover more about it your voice
is a very complex phenomena it it
requires a synchronization of more than
100 muscles in your body and by
listening to the voice we can understand
possible failures of what happens inside
for example listening to very specific
type of turbulences and
linearity of the voice can help predict
very early stages of Parkinson just your
phone called listening to the brazenness
of the voice can help detect heart
disease and we also know that the
changes of tempo inside individual words
is a very good marker of depression your
voice is also very linked with your
hormone levels third part is listening
to female voices were able to very
accurately place the speaker on their
menstrual cycle just with acoustic
informations and now with technologies
listening to us all the time
Amazon Alexa from Amazon echo might be
able to predict if you’re pregnant even
before you know it so think about it
think about the ethical application of
that your voice is also very linked to
how you create relationship you have a
different voice for every person you
talk to if I take a little snippet of
your voice and I analyze it I can know
whether you’re talking to your mother to
your brother your friend or your boss so
in we can also use as a predictors of
the vocal posture
meaning how you decide to place your
voice when you talk to someone and you
vocal posture when you talk to your
spouse can help predict not only if but
also when you will divorce so there’s a
lot to learn from listening to voices
and I believe that this has to start
with understanding that we have more
than one voice so I’m going to talk
about three voices that most of us
possess in a model of what I call the
mask so when you look at a mask what you
see is a projection of a character let’s
call that your outward voice this is
also the most classic way to think about
the voice it’s so we’re projecting
yourself in the world the mechanism for
this projection is well understood your
lung contract your diaphragm and that
creates a self-sustained vibration of
your vocal fold that creates a sound and
then the way you open and close the
cavities in your mouth
your vocal tract is going to transform
the sound so everyone has the same
mechanism but voices are quite unique
it’s because very subtle differences in
size in physiology in hormone levels are
gonna change it’s gonna make very subtle
differences in your outward voice a new
brain is very good at picking up those
subtle differences from other people’s
outward voices in our lab we’re working
on teaching machines to understand those
subtle differences and we we use deep
learning to create a real-time speaker
identification system to help raise
awareness on the shared of on the use of
the shared vocal space so who talks and
who never talks during meetings to
increase group intelligence and one of
the difficulties with that is that your
voice is also not static we already said
that it changes with every person you
talk to but it also changes generally
throughout your life at the beginning
and at the end of the journey male and
female voices are very similar it’s very
hard to distinguish the voice of a very
young girl from the voice of a very
young boy but in the between your voice
become a marker of your fluid identity
and generally for male voices there is a
big change at puberty and then for
female voices there is a change at each
pregnancy and a big change at menopause
so all of that is the voice other people
hear when you talk so why is it that we
are so unfamiliar with it why is it that
it’s not the voice that we hear so let’s
think about it when you wear a mask you
actually don’t see the mask and when you
try to observe it what you will see is
inside of the mask and that’s your
inward voice so to understand why it’s
different let’s try to understand the
mechanism of perception of this inward
voice because your body has many ways of
filtering it differently from the
outward voice so to perceive this voice
it first has to travel to your ears and
your outward voice travels through the
air while your inward voice travels
through your bones this is called bone
conduction and because of this
your inner voice is gonna sound in a
lower register and also more musically
harmonically harmonically than your
outward voice once it travels there it
has to access your inner ear and there
is a subtle mechanism taking place here
it’s a it’s a mechanical filter it’s a
little partition that comes and protects
your inner ear each time you produces a
sound so that also reduces what you hear
and then there is a third filter it’s a
biological filter you’re in your cochlea
it’s a part of your inner ear that
processes the sound is made out of
living cells and those living cells are
going to trigger it differently
according to how often they hear the
sound it’s an arbitration effect so
because of this as your voice is the
sound you hear the most in your life you
actually hear it less than all the
sounds finally we have a force filter
it’s a neurological filter neurologist
found out recently that when you open
your mouth to create a sound your own
auditory cortex shuts down so you hear
your voice but your brain actually never
listens to the sound of your voice
well if occasionally that might make
sense because we know Coakley’s even
what you’re gonna sound like so maybe we
don’t need to spend energy analyzing the
signal and this is called a corollary
discharge and this happened for every
motion that your body does the exact
definition of a corollary discharge is a
copy of a motor command that is sent by
the brain this copy doesn’t create any
motion itself but instead is sent to
other regions of the brain to inform
them of the impending motion and for the
voice this corollary discharge also has
a different name it is your inner voice
so let’s recapitulate we have the masks
outward voice the inside of the mask you
enoyed voice and then you have your
inner voice and I like to see this one
as the puppeteer that holds the strings
of the whole system
and your inner voice is so when you hear
when you read the text silently when you
rehearse for an important conversation
sometime it’s hard to turn it off right
is really hard to look at the text
written in your native language without
having this inner voice read it it also
the voice that refuses to stop singing
this stupid song you have in your head
and for some people it’s actually
impossible to control it and that the
case of schizophrenic patients who have
auditory hallucinations who can’t
distinguish at all between voices coming
from inside and outside the head so in
our lab we are also working on small
devices to help those people make those
distinction and know if the voice is
internal or external you can also think
about the inner voice as a voice that
speak in your dream this universe can
take many forms and in your dreams you
actually unleash the potential of this
inner voice that’s another work we are
doing in our lab trying to access this
inner voice in dreams so even if you
can’t always control it the inner voice
you can always engage with it through
dialogue from inner dialogues and you
can even see this inner voice as the
missing link between salt and actions so
I hope I’ve left you with a better
appreciation a new appreciation of all
of you voices and the roles it plays
inside and outside of you as for your
voice is a very critical determinant of
what makes you humans and of how you
interact with the world
[Applause]
did humans became humans some of them
will say that well at some point we
started standing on our feet became
biped and became the masters of our
environment others will say that because
our brain started growing much bigger
that were able to have much more complex
cognitive processes and others might
argue that it’s because we developed a
language that allowed us to evolve as a
species interestingly those three
phenomena are all connected we’re not
sure how or in which order but they are
all linked with the change of shape of
little bone in the back of your neck
that change the angle between our head
and our body that made that we were able
to stand upright but also for a brain to
evolve in the back and for Voicebox to
grow from 7 centimeters for primates to
11 and up to 17 centimeters for humans
and this is called add essence of the
land and the larynx is a site of your
voice when baby humans are born today
their larynx is not descended yet that
only happens at about 3 months old so
metaphorically each of us here I’ve
relived the evolution of our whole
specie and talking about babies when you
were starting to develop in your
mother’s womb the first sensation that
you had coming from the outside world
and only 3 weeks old when you’re about
the size of a shrimp we’re through the
tactile sensation coming from the
vibrations of your mother’s voice so as
we can see the human voice is quite
meaningful and important at the species
at the level of the species
at the level of the society this is how
we communicate and create bonds and at
the personal and interpersonal levels
with our voice which are much more than
words and data this is which we shall
basically who we are and our voice is
indiscernible from how other people see
us it is a mask that we were in society
but our relationship with our own voice
is far from obvious we rarely use our
voice for our self we use it as a gift
to give to others it is a how we touch
each other
it’s a dialectical grooming but what do
we think about our own voice so please
raise your hand if you don’t like the
sound of your voice when you hear it on
recording machine yeah thank you indeed
most people report not liking the sound
of their of their voice recording so
what does that mean let’s try to
understand that in the next 10 minutes
I’m a researcher at the MIT Media Lab
part of the Opera the Future group and
my my research focus is on the
relationship people have with their own
voice and with the voices of others I
study what we can learn from listening
to voices from the advice field from
neurology to biology cognitive sciences
linguistic and in our group we create
tools and experiences to help people
gain a better applied understanding of
their voice in order to reduce the
biases to become better listeners to
create more healthy relationship or just
to understand themselves better and this
really has to come with a holistic
approach on the voice because think
about all the applications and
implications that the voice might have
as we discover more about it your voice
is a very complex phenomena it it
requires a synchronization of more than
100 muscles in your body and by
listening to the voice we can understand
possible failures of what happens inside
for example listening to very specific
type of turbulences and
linearity of the voice can help predict
very early stages of Parkinson just your
phone called listening to the brazenness
of the voice can help detect heart
disease and we also know that the
changes of tempo inside individual words
is a very good marker of depression your
voice is also very linked with your
hormone levels third part is listening
to female voices were able to very
accurately place the speaker on their
menstrual cycle just with acoustic
informations and now with technologies
listening to us all the time
Amazon Alexa from Amazon echo might be
able to predict if you’re pregnant even
before you know it so think about it
think about the ethical application of
that your voice is also very linked to
how you create relationship you have a
different voice for every person you
talk to if I take a little snippet of
your voice and I analyze it I can know
whether you’re talking to your mother to
your brother your friend or your boss so
in we can also use as a predictors of
the vocal posture
meaning how you decide to place your
voice when you talk to someone and you
vocal posture when you talk to your
spouse can help predict not only if but
also when you will divorce so there’s a
lot to learn from listening to voices
and I believe that this has to start
with understanding that we have more
than one voice so I’m going to talk
about three voices that most of us
possess in a model of what I call the
mask so when you look at a mask what you
see is a projection of a character let’s
call that your outward voice this is
also the most classic way to think about
the voice it’s so we’re projecting
yourself in the world the mechanism for
this projection is well understood your
lung contract your diaphragm and that
creates a self-sustained vibration of
your vocal fold that creates a sound and
then the way you open and close the
cavities in your mouth
your vocal tract is going to transform
the sound so everyone has the same
mechanism but voices are quite unique
it’s because very subtle differences in
size in physiology in hormone levels are
gonna change it’s gonna make very subtle
differences in your outward voice a new
brain is very good at picking up those
subtle differences from other people’s
outward voices in our lab we’re working
on teaching machines to understand those
subtle differences and we we use deep
learning to create a real-time speaker
identification system to help raise
awareness on the shared of on the use of
the shared vocal space so who talks and
who never talks during meetings to
increase group intelligence and one of
the difficulties with that is that your
voice is also not static we already said
that it changes with every person you
talk to but it also changes generally
throughout your life at the beginning
and at the end of the journey male and
female voices are very similar it’s very
hard to distinguish the voice of a very
young girl from the voice of a very
young boy but in the between your voice
become a marker of your fluid identity
and generally for male voices there is a
big change at puberty and then for
female voices there is a change at each
pregnancy and a big change at menopause
so all of that is the voice other people
hear when you talk so why is it that we
are so unfamiliar with it why is it that
it’s not the voice that we hear so let’s
think about it when you wear a mask you
actually don’t see the mask and when you
try to observe it what you will see is
inside of the mask and that’s your
inward voice so to understand why it’s
different let’s try to understand the
mechanism of perception of this inward
voice because your body has many ways of
filtering it differently from the
outward voice so to perceive this voice
it first has to travel to your ears and
your outward voice travels through the
air while your inward voice travels
through your bones this is called bone
conduction and because of this
your inner voice is gonna sound in a
lower register and also more musically
harmonically harmonically than your
outward voice once it travels there it
has to access your inner ear and there
is a subtle mechanism taking place here
it’s a it’s a mechanical filter it’s a
little partition that comes and protects
your inner ear each time you produces a
sound so that also reduces what you hear
and then there is a third filter it’s a
biological filter you’re in your cochlea
it’s a part of your inner ear that
processes the sound is made out of
living cells and those living cells are
going to trigger it differently
according to how often they hear the
sound it’s an arbitration effect so
because of this as your voice is the
sound you hear the most in your life you
actually hear it less than all the
sounds finally we have a force filter
it’s a neurological filter neurologist
found out recently that when you open
your mouth to create a sound your own
auditory cortex shuts down so you hear
your voice but your brain actually never
listens to the sound of your voice
well if occasionally that might make
sense because we know Coakley’s even
what you’re gonna sound like so maybe we
don’t need to spend energy analyzing the
signal and this is called a corollary
discharge and this happened for every
motion that your body does the exact
definition of a corollary discharge is a
copy of a motor command that is sent by
the brain this copy doesn’t create any
motion itself but instead is sent to
other regions of the brain to inform
them of the impending motion and for the
voice this corollary discharge also has
a different name it is your inner voice
so let’s recapitulate we have the masks
outward voice the inside of the mask you
enoyed voice and then you have your
inner voice and I like to see this one
as the puppeteer that holds the strings
of the whole system
and your inner voice is so when you hear
when you read the text silently when you
rehearse for an important conversation
sometime it’s hard to turn it off right
is really hard to look at the text
written in your native language without
having this inner voice read it it also
the voice that refuses to stop singing
this stupid song you have in your head
and for some people it’s actually
impossible to control it and that the
case of schizophrenic patients who have
auditory hallucinations who can’t
distinguish at all between voices coming
from inside and outside the head so in
our lab we are also working on small
devices to help those people make those
distinction and know if the voice is
internal or external you can also think
about the inner voice as a voice that
speak in your dream this universe can
take many forms and in your dreams you
actually unleash the potential of this
inner voice that’s another work we are
doing in our lab trying to access this
inner voice in dreams so even if you
can’t always control it the inner voice
you can always engage with it through
dialogue from inner dialogues and you
can even see this inner voice as the
missing link between salt and actions so
I hope I’ve left you with a better
appreciation a new appreciation of all
of you voices and the roles it plays
inside and outside of you as for your
voice is a very critical determinant of
what makes you humans and of how you
interact with the world
[Applause]
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