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Updated: Feb 28, 2026

Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: May 15, 2016
Acute Ischemic Lesions Associated with Impairments in Expression and Recognition of Affective Prosody
Amy E Wright1, Cameron Davis1, Yessenia Gomez1
1Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
Purpose:
We aimed to: (a) review existing data on the neural basis of affective prosody;(b) test the hypothesis that there are double dissociations in impairments of expression and recognition of affective prosody; and (c) identify areas of infarct associated with impaired expression and/or recognition of affective prosody after acute right hemisphere (RH) ischemic stroke.
Methods:
Participants were tested on recognition of emotional prosody in content-neutral sentences. Expression was evaluated by measuring variability in fundamental frequency. Voxel-based symptom mapping was used to identify areas associated with severity of expressive deficits.
Results:
We found that 9/23 patients had expressive prosody impairments; 5/9 of these patients also had impaired recognition of affective prosody; 2/9 had selective deficits in expressive prosody; recognition was not tested in 2/9. Another 6/23 patients had selective impairment in recognition of affective prosody. Severity of expressive deficits was associated with lesions in right temporal pole; patients with temporal pole lesions had deficits in expression and recognition.
Conclusions:
Expression and recognition of prosody can be selectively impaired. Damage to right anterior temporal pole is associated with impairment of both, indicating a role of this structure in a mechanism shared by expression and production of affective prosody.
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