Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e28701. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028701. Epub 2011 Dec 12.
Emotional prosody comprehension (EPC), the ability to interpret another person's feelings by listening to their tone of voice, is crucial for effective social communication. Previous studies assessing the neural correlates of EPC have found inconsistent results, particularly regarding the involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). It remained unclear whether the involvement of the mPFC is linked to an increased demand in socio-cognitive components of EPC such as mental state attribution and if basic perceptual processing of EPC can be performed without the contribution of this region.
fMRI was used to delineate neural activity during the perception of prosodic stimuli conveying simple and complex emotion. Emotional trials in general, as compared to neutral ones, activated a network comprising temporal and lateral frontal brain regions, while complex emotion trials specifically showed an additional involvement of the mPFC, premotor cortex, frontal operculum and left insula.
These results indicate that the mPFC and premotor areas might be associated, but are not crucial to EPC. However, the mPFC supports socio-cognitive skills necessary to interpret complex emotion such as inferring mental states. Additionally, the premotor cortex involvement may reflect the participation of the mirror neuron system for prosody processing particularly of complex emotion.
情感韵律理解（EPC），即通过倾听他人的语调来解读他人感受的能力，对于有效的社交沟通至关重要。之前评估 EPC 神经相关性的研究得出了不一致的结果，特别是关于内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）的参与。目前尚不清楚 mPFC 的参与是否与 EPC 的社会认知成分（如心理状态归因）的需求增加有关，以及如果没有该区域的贡献，EPC 的基本感知处理是否可以进行。
使用 fMRI 来描绘感知韵律刺激时的神经活动，这些刺激传达简单和复杂的情绪。与中性刺激相比，一般的情感刺激激活了包括颞叶和额侧前部脑区的网络，而复杂的情感刺激则特别显示 mPFC、运动前皮层、额前回和左岛叶的额外参与。
这些结果表明，mPFC 和运动前区可能相关，但对 EPC 并非至关重要。然而，mPFC 支持解释复杂情感所需的社会认知技能，例如推断心理状态。此外，运动前皮层的参与可能反映了镜像神经元系统对韵律处理的参与，特别是对复杂情感的处理。
