George M S, Parekh P I, Rosinsky N, Ketter T A, Kimbrell T A, Heilman K M, Herscovitch P, Post R M
Biological Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md, USA.
Arch Neurol. 1996 Jul;53(7):665-70. doi: 10.1001/archneur.1996.00550070103017.
Defects in expressing or understanding the affective or emotional tone of speech (aprosodias) have been associated with right hemisphere dysfunction, while defects of propositional language have been linked to left hemisphere disease. The brain regions involved in recognition of emotional prosody in healthy subjects is less clear.
To investigate the brain regions involved in understanding emotional prosody and to determine whether these differ from those involved in understanding emotion based on propositional content.
We studied 13 healthy subjects using water labeled with radioactive oxygen 15 and positron emission tomography while they listened to 3 similar sets of spoken English sentences. In different tasks, their responses were based on the emotional propositional content, on the emotional intonation of the sentence (prosody), or on their ability to repeat the second word in the sentence (control).
Understanding propositional content activated the prefrontal cortex bilaterally, on the left more than on the right. In contrast, responding to the emotional prosody activated the right prefrontal cortex.
Neurologically healthy subjects activate right hemisphere regions during emotional prosody recognition.
言语情感或情绪语调表达或理解方面的缺陷（韵律障碍）与右半球功能障碍相关，而命题语言缺陷则与左半球疾病有关。健康受试者中涉及情感韵律识别的脑区尚不清楚。
研究参与理解情感韵律的脑区，并确定这些脑区是否与基于命题内容理解情感的脑区不同。
我们使用放射性氧15标记的水和正电子发射断层扫描技术，对13名健康受试者进行了研究，同时他们收听了3组相似的英语口语句子。在不同任务中，他们的反应基于情感命题内容、句子的情感语调（韵律）或重复句子中第二个单词的能力（对照）。
理解命题内容会双侧激活前额叶皮层，左侧比右侧更明显。相比之下，对情感韵律做出反应会激活右侧前额叶皮层。
神经系统健康的受试者在情感韵律识别过程中会激活右半球区域。
