Brain and Creativity Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2010 Jan 20;5(1):e8759. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008759.
Prosody, the melody and intonation of speech, involves the rhythm, rate, pitch and voice quality to relay linguistic and emotional information from one individual to another. A significant component of human social communication depends upon interpreting and responding to another person's prosodic tone as well as one's own ability to produce prosodic speech. However there has been little work on whether the perception and production of prosody share common neural processes, and if so, how these might correlate with individual differences in social ability.
The aim of the present study was to determine the degree to which perception and production of prosody rely on shared neural systems. Using fMRI, neural activity during perception and production of a meaningless phrase in different prosodic intonations was measured. Regions of overlap for production and perception of prosody were found in premotor regions, in particular the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Activity in these regions was further found to correlate with how high an individual scored on two different measures of affective empathy as well as a measure on prosodic production ability.
These data indicate, for the first time, that areas that are important for prosody production may also be utilized for prosody perception, as well as other aspects of social communication and social understanding, such as aspects of empathy and prosodic ability.
韵律是言语的旋律和语调，涉及节奏、语速、音高和音质，用于将语言和情感信息从一个人传达给另一个人。人类社交交流的一个重要组成部分依赖于解释和响应另一个人的韵律语调，以及一个人自己产生韵律言语的能力。然而，关于韵律的感知和产生是否共享共同的神经过程，以及如果是这样，这些过程如何与社交能力的个体差异相关，研究甚少。
本研究旨在确定韵律感知和产生在多大程度上依赖于共享的神经系统。使用 fMRI 测量了在不同韵律语调下感知和产生无意义短语时的神经活动。在运动前区域（特别是左额下回）中发现了韵律产生和感知的重叠区域。这些区域的活动还与个体在两种不同的情感同理心测量以及韵律产生能力测量中的得分高低相关。
这些数据首次表明，对韵律产生很重要的区域也可能用于韵律感知，以及社交交流和社交理解的其他方面，例如同理心和韵律能力的方面。
