Recognition of emotional prosody and verbal components of spoken language:an fMRI study

This study examined the neural areas involved in the recognition of both em otional prosody and phonemic components of words expressed in spoken langua ge using echo-planar, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Ten rig ht-handed males were asked to discriminate words based on tither expressed emotional tone (angry, happy, sad, or neutral) or phonemic characteristics, specifically, initial consonant sound (bower, dower, power, or tower). Sig nificant bilateral activity was observed in the detection of both emotional and verbal aspects of language when compared to baseline activity. We foun d that the detection of emotion compared with verbal detection resulted in significant activity in the right inferior frontal lobe. Conversely, the de tection of verbal stimuli compared with the detection of emotion activated left inferior frontal lobe regions most significantly. Specific analysis of the anterior auditory cortex revealed increased right hemisphere activity during the detection of emotion compared to activity during verbal detectio n. These findings illustrate bilateral involvement in the detection of emot ion in language while concomitantly showing significantly lateralized activ ity in both emotional and verbal detection, in both the temporal and fronta l lobes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.