Recognizing a familiar voice is one of the brain’s earliest social feats. But what are the brain circuits that let a newborn pick out mom in a crowded nursery? How do they change as kids turn toward friends and the wider world? And what are we learning about why this instinct fails to develop in the autistic brain?

This week, host Nicholas Weiler joins Stanford neuroscientist Dan Abrams on the quest to understand the neural “hub” that links our brains' hearing centers to the networks that tag voices as rewarding, social, and worth our attention. The findings could reshape early-intervention strategies for kids on the spectrum.

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Stanford Speech and Social Neuroscience Lab
- Participate in a Study
- Community Support Resources
Publications
- Underconnectivity between voice-selective cortex and reward circuitry in children with autism (PNAS, 2013)
- Neural circuits underlying mother’s voice perception predict social communication abilities in children (PNAS, 2016)
- Impaired voice processing in reward and salience circuits predicts social communication in children with autism (eLife, 2019)
- A Neurodevelopmental Shift in Reward Circuitry from Mother's to Nonfamilial Voices in Adolescence (Journal of Neuroscience, 2022)
Stanford Coverage
- "The teen brain tunes in less to Mom's voice, more to unfamiliar voices, study finds" (Stanford Medicine, 2022)
- "Brain wiring explains why autism hinders grasp of vocal emotion, says Stanford Medicine study" (Stanford Medicine, 2023)

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Why voices light us up—but leave the autistic brain in the dark | Dan Abrams

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