Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence (THBI) and Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, United States.
Department of Epilepsy Center, Tsinghua University Yuquan Hospital, Beijing 100040, PR China.
Neuroimage. 2022 Oct 15;260:119502. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119502. Epub 2022 Jul 22.
The emotional status of a speaker is an important non-linguistic cue carried by human voice and can be perceived by a listener in vocal communication. Understanding the neural circuits involved in processing emotions carried by human voice is crucial for understanding the neural basis of social interaction. Previous studies have shown that human insula and amygdala responded more selectively to emotional sounds than non-emotional sounds. However, it is not clear whether the neural selectivity to emotional sounds in these brain structures is determined by the emotion presented by a speaker which is associated with the acoustic properties of the sounds or by the emotion perceived by a listener. In this study, we recorded intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) responses to emotional human voices while subjects performed emotion recognition tasks. We found that the iEEG responses of Heschl's gyrus (HG) and posterior insula were determined by the presented emotion, whereas the iEEG responses of anterior insula and amygdala were driven by the perceived emotion. These results suggest that the anterior insula and amygdala play a crucial role in conscious perception of emotions carried by human voice.
说话者的情绪状态是人类声音携带的重要非语言线索，可以在语音交流中被听众感知。理解处理人类声音所携带的情感的神经回路对于理解社交互动的神经基础至关重要。先前的研究表明，人类脑岛和杏仁核对情绪声音的反应比非情绪声音更具选择性。然而，目前尚不清楚这些脑结构中对情绪声音的神经选择性是由与声音的声学特性相关的说话者呈现的情绪决定的，还是由听众感知的情绪决定的。在这项研究中，我们记录了被试在执行情绪识别任务时对情绪性人类声音的颅内脑电图（iEEG）反应。我们发现，HG 和后岛叶的 iEEG 反应由呈现的情绪决定，而前岛叶和杏仁核的 iEEG 反应则由感知的情绪驱动。这些结果表明，前岛叶和杏仁核在人类声音所携带的情绪的有意识感知中起着至关重要的作用。
