Talking in Fury: The Cortico-Subcortical Network Underlying Angry Vocalizations.

Although the neural basis for the perception of vocal emotions has been described extensively, the neural basis for the expression of vocal emotions is almost unknown. Here, we asked participants both to repeat and to express high-arousing angry vocalizations to command (i.e., evoked expressions). First, repeated expressions elicited activity in the left middle superior temporal gyrus (STG), pointing to a short auditory memory trace for the repetition of vocal expressions. Evoked expressions activated the left hippocampus, suggesting the retrieval of long-term stored scripts. Secondly, angry compared with neutral expressions elicited activity in the inferior frontal cortex IFC and the dorsal basal ganglia (BG), specifically during evoked expressions. Angry expressions also activated the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the latter correlated with pupil size as an indicator of bodily arousal during emotional output behavior. Though uncorrelated, both ACC activity and pupil diameter were also increased during repetition trials indicating increased control demands during the more constraint production type of precisely repeating prosodic intonations. Finally, different acoustic measures of angry expressions were associated with activity in the left STG, bilateral inferior frontal gyrus, and dorsal BG.