Understanding the emotional expression of verbal interjections: a functional MRI study.

Susanne Dietrich, Ingo Hertrich, Kai Alter, Anja Ischebeck, Hermann Ackermann

Journal: Neuroreport 2009;19(18):1751-5

PMID: 18955907

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Abstract

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the distribution of hemodynamic brain responses bound to the perceptual processing of interjections, that is 'exclamations inserted into an utterance without grammatical connection to it', was determined (vs. a silent baseline condition). These utterances convey information about a speaker's affective/emotional state by their 'tone' (emotional prosody) and/or their lexical content. Both communicative aspects of interjections elicited significant bilateral blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal changes within superior temporal cortex. In addition, affective-prosodic cues yielded hemodynamic activation of the posterior insula as well as cortical/subcortical structures engaged in the control of innate emotional behavior. These observations corroborate the suggestion that interjections might trace back to proto-speech vocalizations of an early stage of language evolution.

Address: Department of General Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Tuübingen, Germany. [email protected]

DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e3283193e9e

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MeSH Terms: Adult, Brain, Cerebral Cortex, Cues, Expressed Emotion, Female, Functional Laterality, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Semantics, Speech, Speech Acoustics, Speech Perception, Temporal Lobe, Verbal Behavior, Young Adult