Specific Brain Regions Involved in Decoding of the Anger Acoustic Parameters.

INTRODUCTION

The present study aimed to identify brain regions sensitive to emotion-specific acoustic parameters in healthy individuals.

METHODS

Three pseudo-words in the form of one stimulus were consecutively spoken with neutral and angry prosody. Then, we changed the acoustic parameters (mean fundamental frequency [F0], intensity, and speech tempo) in angry prosody. The stimuli were presented in a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment to detect anger or neutrality.

RESULTS

Stronger activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and Heschl's gyrus (HG) was observed when the mean F0 converted from 300 Hz to 250 Hz. Increased activity in the right posterior STG and posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) was revealed in more intensity anger prosody. Moreover, we found stronger activity in the right mid-STG, MTG, and the left STG in a faster speech tempo.

CONCLUSION

According to the increased activity in the STG and MTG of both hemispheres following the more intense anger (lower fundamental frequency, more intensity, and faster speech tempo), a more intense comprehension of anger may result from the sending different information from these regions to the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and orbital frontal cortex (OFC).