The refined neural fronto-temporal network for the decoding of affective prosody
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1
University of Geneva, Switzerland
The human brain incorporates a distributed and specialized network of temporal and frontal brain regions to decode emotional information conveyed by the vocal tone of an utterance. However, recent studies suggest that this network of brain regions becomes differentially active depending on the attentional orientation towards emotional prosodic stimuli. Here, we used speech-like but semantically meaningless angry and neutral human utterances to reveal brain activations during implicit (gender decision) and explicit processing (prosodic discriminations) of vocal emotional tones. More specifically, we used high spatial resolution brain scans covering the superior temporal, inferior frontal and medial limbic corticesto determine the location and connectivity within this emotional prosody network depending on the task demands. The analysis revealed a significant increase of brain activity related to angry compared to neutral voices independent of the attentional focus in right middle (mSTG) and posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) and in left inferior frontal cortex (IFC). Left mSTG and pSTG as well as right IFC were only active during implicit processing, whereas left amygdala were only active during explicit processing. Furthermore, we found specific activation in subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) during explicit processing in bilateral basal ganglia during implicit processing. A psycho-physiological interaction (PPI) analysis revealed bi-directional connections in this fronto-temporo-limbic prosody network. Finally, a sequential approach using dynamic caudal modeling (DCM) and Bayesian model selection (BMS) revealed a right hemispheric network of STG regions with a central role of the pSTG which is influenced by feed forward signals from the amygdala.
Keywords:
Brain regions,
emotion
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Emotion, Motivation and the Social Brain
Citation:
Frühholz
S,
Ceravolo
L and
Grandjean
D
(2011). The refined neural fronto-temporal network for the decoding of affective prosody.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00278
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Received:
22 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Sascha Frühholz, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, s.fruehholz@gmail.com