Is the brain capable of distinguishing a voice from phonemes? Researchers devised pseudo-words spoken by three voices. Their aim? To observe how the brain processes this information when it focuses either on the voice or phonemes. The scientists discovered that the auditory cortex amplifies different aspects of the sounds, depending on what task is being performed. Voice-specific information is prioritized for voice differentiation, while phoneme-specific information is important for the differentiation of speech sounds.