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Understanding emotional prosody activates right hemisphere regions
M S George1, P I Parekh, N Rosinsky
1Biological Psychiatry Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md, USA. georgem@musc.edu
Archives of Neurology
|July 1, 1996
Summary
Understanding emotional tone in speech (prosody) activates the right prefrontal cortex in healthy individuals. This contrasts with propositional language, which engages bilateral prefrontal areas.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neurolinguistics
Background:
- Aprosodias, or deficits in processing emotional speech tone, are linked to right hemisphere dysfunction.
- Deficits in propositional language are associated with left hemisphere disease.
- Brain regions for recognizing emotional prosody in healthy individuals require further clarification.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate brain regions involved in understanding emotional prosody.
- Determine if these regions differ from those processing emotion via propositional content.
Main Methods:
- 13 healthy subjects underwent positron emission tomography (PET) with oxygen-15.
- Subjects listened to spoken English sentences in three conditions: propositional content, emotional prosody, and a control task.
- Brain activity was measured during each task.
Main Results:
- Understanding propositional content activated bilateral prefrontal cortex, predominantly on the left.
- Responding to emotional prosody specifically activated the right prefrontal cortex.
Conclusions:
- Neurologically healthy subjects utilize right hemisphere regions for emotional prosody recognition.
- Emotional prosody processing appears lateralized to the right hemisphere in healthy individuals.