WHEN impersonators mimic an accent, celebrity, or do a voice-over for a cartoon, they may use areas of the brain not normally activated during speech, enabling them to “get under the skin” of their target.
of University College London and colleagues asked seven people to impersonate 40 celebrity voices and a selection of foreign accents while lying in an fMRI brain scanner. Only regions normally activated during speech lit up.
In contrast, when British voice impressionist did a range of impressions in the scanner, many more brain regions were active. The researchers say that this…
