College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Affective and Social Cognitive Science, Shenzhen University Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 9;8(1):218. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-18683-2.
Emotional expressions of others embedded in speech prosodies are important for social interactions. This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate how speech prosodies of different emotional categories are processed in the cortex. The results demonstrated several cerebral areas critical for emotional prosody processing. We confirmed that the superior temporal cortex, especially the right middle and posterior parts of superior temporal gyrus (BA 22/42), primarily works to discriminate between emotional and neutral prosodies. Furthermore, the results suggested that categorization of emotions occurs within a high-level brain region-the frontal cortex, since the brain activation patterns were distinct when positive (happy) were contrasted to negative (fearful and angry) prosody in the left middle part of inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45) and the frontal eye field (BA8), and when angry were contrasted to neutral prosody in bilateral orbital frontal regions (BA 10/11). These findings verified and extended previous fMRI findings in adult brain and also provided a "developed version" of brain activation for our following neonatal study.
他人言语中的情绪表达对于社会互动非常重要。本研究使用功能近红外光谱技术（functional near-infrared spectroscopy）来探究不同情绪类别的言语韵律在大脑皮层中的处理方式。研究结果表明了几个对于情绪韵律处理至关重要的大脑区域。我们证实了颞上皮质（superior temporal cortex），特别是颞上回（superior temporal gyrus）的右侧中后部（BA 22/42），主要负责区分情绪和中性韵律。此外，研究结果表明情绪的分类发生在大脑的高级区域——额叶（frontal cortex），因为当左额下回（inferior frontal gyrus）中部（BA 45）和额眼区（frontal eye field）（BA8）中的积极（愉快）与消极（恐惧和愤怒）韵律进行对比，以及当愤怒与中性韵律进行对比时，大脑激活模式在双侧眶额区（orbital frontal regions）（BA 10/11）中存在差异。这些发现验证并扩展了之前在成人大脑中进行的 fMRI 研究结果，也为我们后续的新生儿研究提供了一个“发展版本”的大脑激活模式。
