Sander Kerstin, Frome Yvonne, Scheich Henning
Special Laboratory Non-Invasive Brain Imaging, Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, Magdeburg, Germany.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2007 Oct;28(10):1007-22. doi: 10.1002/hbm.20333.
One of the functions of emotional vocalizations is the regulation of social relationships like those between adults and children. Listening to infant vocalizations is known to engage amygdala as well as anterior and posterior cingulate cortices. But, the functional relationships between these structures still need further clarification. Here, nonparental women and men listened to laughing and crying of preverbal infants and to vocalization-derived control stimuli, while performing a pure tone detection task during low-noise functional magnetic resonance imaging. Infant vocalizations elicited stronger activation in amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of women, whereas the alienated control stimuli elicited stronger activation in men. Independent of listeners' gender, auditory cortex (AC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) were more strongly activated by the control stimuli than by infant laughing or crying. The gender-dependent correlates of neural activity in amygdala and ACC may reflect neural predispositions in women for responses to preverbal infant vocalizations, whereas the gender-independent similarity of activation patterns in PCC and AC may reflect more sensory-based and cognitive levels of neural processing. In comparison to our previous work on adult laughing and crying, the infant vocalizations elicited manifold higher amygdala activation.
情绪化发声的功能之一是调节社会关系，如成人与儿童之间的关系。已知倾听婴儿发声会激活杏仁核以及前扣带回和后扣带回皮质。但是，这些结构之间的功能关系仍需进一步阐明。在此，非父母身份的女性和男性在低噪声功能磁共振成像期间进行纯音检测任务时，倾听学步前婴儿的笑声和哭声以及发声衍生的对照刺激。婴儿发声在女性的杏仁核和前扣带回皮质（ACC）中引发更强的激活，而异化的对照刺激在男性中引发更强的激活。与听众的性别无关，听觉皮质（AC）和后扣带回皮质（PCC）受对照刺激的激活比受婴儿笑声或哭声的激活更强。杏仁核和ACC中神经活动的性别依赖性关联可能反映了女性对学步前婴儿发声做出反应的神经倾向，而PCC和AC中激活模式的性别无关相似性可能反映了基于感觉和认知水平的更多神经处理。与我们之前关于成人笑声和哭声的研究相比，婴儿发声引发的杏仁核激活要高得多。
