Gruber Thibaud, Debracque Coralie, Ceravolo Leonardo, Igloi Kinga, Marin Bosch Blanca, Frühholz Sascha, Grandjean Didier
Neuroscience of Emotion and Affective Dynamics Lab, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences and Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Cognitive Science Center, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Front Neurosci. 2020 Jun 5;14:570. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00570. eCollection 2020.
Functional Near-Infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging tool that has been recently used in a variety of cognitive paradigms. Yet, it remains unclear whether fNIRS is suitable to study complex cognitive processes such as categorization or discrimination. Previously, functional imaging has suggested a role of both inferior frontal cortices in attentive decoding and cognitive evaluation of emotional cues in human vocalizations. Here, we extended paradigms used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the suitability of fNIRS to study frontal lateralization of human emotion vocalization processing during explicit and implicit categorization and discrimination using mini-blocks and event-related stimuli. Participants heard speech-like but semantically meaningless pseudowords spoken in various tones and evaluated them based on their emotional or linguistic content. Behaviorally, participants were faster to discriminate than to categorize; and processed the linguistic faster than the emotional content of stimuli. Interactions between condition (emotion/word), task (discrimination/categorization) and emotion content (anger, fear, neutral) influenced accuracy and reaction time. At the brain level, we found a modulation of the Oxy-Hb changes in IFG depending on condition, task, emotion and hemisphere (right or left), highlighting the involvement of the right hemisphere to process fear stimuli, and of both hemispheres to treat anger stimuli. Our results show that fNIRS is suitable to study vocal emotion evaluation, fostering its application to complex cognitive paradigms.
功能近红外光谱技术（fNIRS）是一种神经成像工具，最近已被应用于各种认知范式。然而，fNIRS是否适合研究诸如分类或辨别等复杂认知过程仍不清楚。此前，功能成像表明，两个额下回在人类发声中情绪线索的注意力解码和认知评估中都发挥作用。在此，我们扩展了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）中使用的范式，以研究fNIRS在使用迷你组块和事件相关刺激进行明确和隐式分类及辨别过程中，对人类情绪发声处理的额叶偏侧化研究的适用性。参与者听到以各种音调说出的类似语音但语义无意义的伪词，并根据其情感或语言内容对其进行评估。在行为层面，参与者辨别比分类更快；处理语言内容比刺激的情感内容更快。条件（情感/单词）、任务（辨别/分类）和情感内容（愤怒、恐惧、中性）之间的相互作用影响准确性和反应时间。在大脑层面，我们发现额下回的氧合血红蛋白变化根据条件、任务、情感和半球（右或左）而受到调节，突出了右半球参与处理恐惧刺激，以及两个半球参与处理愤怒刺激。我们的结果表明，fNIRS适合用于研究发声情绪评估，促进其在复杂认知范式中的应用。
