When reading direct quotations, the brain “hears” the voice of the speaker, researchers at the University of Glasgow have found, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

This shows that readers are likely to engage in perceptual simulations, or spontaneous imagery, of the reported speaker’s voice when reading direct speech, the researchers said.

Ref.: Bo Yao, Pascal Belin, and Christoph Scheepers, Silent Reading of Direct versus Indirect Speech Activates Voice-selective Areas in the Auditory Cortex, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2011; [DOI:10.1162/jocn_a_00022]