What happens when you lose your voice?

A voice matters not just to the person who is speaking, but to the people listening, too. A study on moms and their daughters demonstrates the power of a voice by showing that moms’ voices reduced a measure of stress in the daughters. The same wasn’t true for texting.

In the second episode of The Deep End: Talk to Me, you’ll hear more about the ripple effects created by a lost voice. Jules Rodriguez says that as his voice slipped away, it felt like he was fading. But could a new, more realistic digital voice step in and change his story?

Hear about a tough medical decision Jules and his family were facing, and whether a sophisticated voice clone could influence his choice. [reporter audio] Hi, this is Laura calling. This is Laura Sanders from Science News. Is now an OK time to talk about your paper coming out?

I would love to start with just the very big picture question of why you did this study. Why did you do this study? What were you hoping to find?

Laura Sanders: I’m a neuroscience reporter with Science News, which means I spend a lot of time reading research papers about the brain. One of my very favorite scientific papers, and there are a lot of them, so this is really saying something, is a study published way back in 2012. [voice] Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have found the sound of a mother’s voice triggers a physical response. Sanders: Sixty-eight girls, all between the ages of 7 and 12, came into a lab in Madison, Wisconsin.

For the experiment, these girls were asked to tell a story out loud and then perform a tricky subtraction problem in their heads. The whole time, they were being watched and evaluated by the researchers. I get sweaty just thinking about it.