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- Leitman, David I., et al.
(författare)
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“It’s not what you say, but how you say it” : A reciprocal temporo-frontal network for affective prosody
- 2010
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. - Lausanne, Switzerland : Frontiers Research Foundation. - 1662-5161. ; 4:Article 19
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Humans communicate emotion vocally by modulating acoustic cues such as pitch, intensity and voice quality. Research has documented how the relative presence or absence of such cues alters the likelihood of perceiving an emotion, but the neural underpinnings of acoustic cue-dependent emotion perception remain obscure. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 20 subjects we examined a reciprocal circuit consisting of superior temporal cortex, amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus that may underlie affective prosodic comprehension. Results showed that increased saliency of emotion-specific acoustic cues was associated with increased activation in superior temporal cortex (planum temporale (PT), posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), and posterior superior middle gyrus (pMTG)) and amygdala, whereas decreased saliency of acoustic cues was associated with increased inferior frontal activity and temporo-frontal connectivity. These results suggest that sensory-integrative processing is facilitated when the acoustic signal is rich in affective information, yielding increased activation in temporal cortex and amygdala. Conversely, when the acoustic signal is ambiguous, greater evaluative processes are recruited, increasing activation in inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and IFG STG connectivity. Auditory regions may thus integrate acoustic information with amygdala input to form emotion-specific representations, which are evaluated within inferior frontal regions.
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| 2. |
- Leitman, David I., et al.
(författare)
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Not pitch perfect : Sensory contributions to affective communication impairment in schizophrenia
- 2011
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Ingår i: Biological Psychiatry. - : Elsevier. - 0006-3223 .- 1873-2402. ; 70:7, s. 611-618
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Schizophrenia patients have vocal affect (prosody) deficits that are treatment resistant and associated with negativesymptoms and poor outcome. The neural correlates of this dysfunction are unclear. Prior study has suggested that schizophrenia vocal affectperception deficits stem from an inability to use acoustic cues, notably pitch, in decoding emotion. Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed in 24 schizophrenia patients and 28 healthy control subjects, during theperformance of a four-choice (happiness, fear, anger, neutral) vocal affect identification task in which items for each emotion variedparametrically in affective salient acoustic cue levels. Results: We observed that parametric increases in cue levels in schizophrenia failed to produce the same identification rate increases as incontrol subjects. These deficits correlated with diminished reciprocal activation changes in superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri andreduced temporo-frontal connectivity. Task activation also correlated with independent measures of pitch perception and negativesymptom severity. Conclusions: These findings illustrate the interplay between sensory and higher-order cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. Sensorycontributions to vocal affect deficits also suggest that this neurobehavioral marker could be targeted by pharmacological or behavioralremediation of acoustic feature discrimination.
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