Identification of emotional intonation evaluated by fMRI

Temporal dynamic changes of intrinsic brain regional activity in depression with smoking

BACKGROUND

Depression is often accompanied by high levels of smoking behavior, and smoking can act as a risk factor for depression. However, there is limited neuroimaging evidence regarding the association between depression and smoking, especially the impact of this association on the brain stability remains unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the interaction effect between smoking and depression from a neurodynamic perspective.

METHOD

We assessed the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from 193 participants (55 depressed smokers; 51 depressed non-smokers; 25 healthy smokers; 62 healthy non-smokers) and calculated 3 regional activity dynamic indicators, including dynamic regional homogeneity (dReHo), dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (dALFF), and dynamic fractional ALFF (dfALFF). Principal component analysis was conducted on these 3 dynamic indicators, and the first component was extracted for the subsequent 2 × 2 factor designs statistical analysis.

RESULT

We observed the interaction between smoking and depression increases the instability of regional activity in the precentral gyrus and precuneus. Compared with HCs, patients with depression showed increased instability of regional activity across widespread regions such as the precentral gyrus, thalamus, and medial frontal gyrus. No main effects of smoking were observed. In depressed smokers, the instability of regional activity in left precuneus is positively correlated with anxiety symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings indicate that smoking potentially exacerbates brain abnormal instability in depression, implying a clinical need to require patients with depression to abstain from smoking.

Effect of an early music intervention on emotional and neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants at 12 and 24 months

Background

Few studies have found long-term effects of early musical environmental enrichment in the NICU on preterm infant's development. This study examines how early music enrichment affects emotional development and effortful control abilities in 12- and 24-month-old very preterm (VPT) infants.

Methods

One hundred nineteen newborns were recruited, including 83 VPTs and 36 full-term (FT) infants. The VPT infants were randomly assigned to the music intervention (44 VPT-Music) or control (39 VPT-control) groups. VPT-Music infants listened specifically designed music intervention from the 33rd week of gestation until hospital discharge. At 12 and 24 months, children were clinically evaluated using the Bayley-III Scales of Infant and Toddler Development and the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery, and at 24 months, with 3 additional episodes of the Effortful Control Battery.

Results and discussion

Our analysis showed that during a fear eliciting task, the VPT-Music group expressed lower level of fear reactivity and higher positive motor actions than VPT-controls and FT infants. At 24 months, the VPT-music group had lower scores for negative motor actions in the joy task, compared to both VPT-control and FT groups. In addition, both FT and VPT-music had higher scores of sustained attention compared to VPT-controls, but the contrasts were not significant. No significant effects on mental, language and motor outcomes were identified and for all three dimensions of the ECBQ.

Conclusion

The present study suggests that an early music intervention in the NICU might influence preterm children's emotional processing at 12 and 24 months. Limitations and suggestions for future research are highlighted.

Decline of Affective Prosody Recognition With a Positivity Bias Among Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

PURPOSE

Understanding how older adults perceive and interpret emotional cues in speech prosody contributes to our knowledge of cognitive aging. This study provides a systematic review with meta-analysis to investigate the extent of the decline in affective prosody recognition (APR) among older adults in terms of overall and emotion-specific performance and explore potential moderators that may cause between-studies heterogeneity.

METHOD

The literature search encompassed five electronic databases, with a specific emphasis on studies comparing the APR performance of older adults with that of younger adults. This comparison was focused on basic emotions. Meta-regression analyses were executed to pinpoint potential moderators related to demographic and methodological characteristics.

RESULTS

A total of 19 studies were included in the meta-analysis, involving 560 older adults with a mean age of 69.15 years and 751 younger adults with a mean age of 23.02 years. The findings indicated a substantial negative effect size (g = -1.21). Furthermore, the magnitude of aggregated effect sizes showed a distinct valence-related recognition pattern with positive prosody exhibiting smaller effect sizes. Language background and years of education were found to moderate the overall and emotion-specific (i.e., disgust and surprise) performance effect estimate, and age and gender significantly influenced the effect estimate of happiness.

CONCLUSIONS

The results confirmed a significant decline in APR ability among older adults compared to younger adults, but this decline was unbalanced across basic emotions. Language background and educational level emerged as significant factors influencing older adults' APR ability. Moreover, participants with a higher mean age exhibited notably poorer performance in recognizing happy prosody. These findings underscore the need to further investigate the neurobiological mechanisms for APR decline associated with aging.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26407888.

The cerebellum and the Mirror Neuron System: A matter of inhibition? From neurophysiological evidence to neuromodulatory implications. A narrative review

Mirror neurons show activity during both the execution (AE) and observation of actions (AO). The Mirror Neuron System (MNS) could be involved during motor imagery (MI) as well. Extensive research suggests that the cerebellum is interconnected with the MNS and may be critically involved in its activities. We gathered evidence on the cerebellum's role in MNS functions, both theoretically and experimentally. Evidence shows that the cerebellum plays a major role during AO and MI and that its lesions impair MNS functions likely because, by modulating the activity of cortical inhibitory interneurons with mirror properties, the cerebellum may contribute to visuomotor matching, which is fundamental for shaping mirror properties. Indeed, the cerebellum may strengthen sensory-motor patterns that minimise the discrepancy between predicted and actual outcome, both during AE and AO. Furthermore, through its connections with the hippocampus, the cerebellum might be involved in internal simulations of motor programs during MI. Finally, as cerebellar neuromodulation might improve its impact on MNS activity, we explored its potential neurophysiological and neurorehabilitation implications.

The Cerebellum in Musicology: a Narrative Review

The cerebellum is involved in cognitive procressing including music perception and music production. This narrative review aims to summarize the current knowledge on the activation of the cerebellum by different musical stimuli, on the involvement of the cerebellum in cognitive loops underlying the analysis of music, and on the role of the cerebellum in the motor network underlying music production. A possible role of the cerebellum in therapeutic settings is also briefly discussed. In a second part, the cerebellum as object of musicology (i.e., in classical music, in contemporary music, cerebellar disorders of musicians) is described.

Functional connectivity alterations in the thalamus among patients with bronchial asthma

Objective

Bronchial Asthma (BA) is a common chronic respiratory disease worldwide. Earlier research has demonstrated abnormal functional connectivity (FC) in multiple cognition-related cortices in asthma patients. The thalamus (Thal) serves as a relay center for transmitting sensory signals, yet the modifications in the thalamic FC among individuals with asthma remain uncertain. This research employed the resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) approach to explore alterations in thalamic functional connectivity among individuals with BA.

Patients and methods

After excluding participants who did not meet the criteria, this study finally included 31 patients with BA, with a gender distribution of 16 males and 15 females. Subsequently, we recruited 31 healthy control participants (HC) matched for age, gender, and educational background. All participants underwent the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD) assessment. Following this, both groups underwent head magnetic resonance imaging scans, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data was collected. Based on the AAL (Automated Anatomical Labeling) template, the bilateral thalamic regions were used as seed points (ROI) for subsequent rsFC research. Pearson correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between thalamic functional connectivity and neuropsychological scales in both groups. After controlling for potential confounding factors such as age, gender, intelligence, and emotional level, a two-sample t-test was further used to explore differences in thalamic functional connectivity between the two groups of participants.

Result

Compared to the HC group, the BA group demonstrated heightened functional connectivity (FC) between the left thalamus and the left cerebellar posterior lobe (CPL), left postcentral gyrus (PCG), and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Concurrently, there was a decrease in FC with both the Lentiform Nucleus (LN) and the left corpus callosum (CC). Performing FC analysis with the right thalamus as the Region of Interest (ROI) revealed an increase in FC between the right thalamus and the right SFG as well as the left CPL. Conversely, a decrease in FC was observed between the right thalamus and the right LN as well as the left CC.

Conclusion

In our study, we have verified the presence of aberrant FC patterns in the thalamus of BA patients. When compared to HCs, BA patients exhibit aberrant alterations in FC between the thalamus and various brain areas connected to vision, hearing, emotional regulation, cognitive control, somatic sensations, and wakefulness. This provides further confirmation of the substantial role played by the thalamus in the advancement of BA.

Cerebral Cortical Thickness Morphometry and Neurocognitive Correlations in Adolescents With Congenital Hypothyroidism

CONTEXT

Subtle cognitive impairments have been described in children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) detected by neonatal screening (NS), even with early and adequate treatment. Patients with CH may present with brain cortical thickness (CT) abnormalities, which may be associated with neurocognitive impairments.

OBJECTIVE

This work aimed to evaluate the CT in adolescents with CH detected by the NS Program (Paraná, Brazil), and to correlate possible abnormalities with cognitive level and variables of neurocognitive prognosis.

METHODS

A review was conducted of medical records followed by psychometric evaluation of adolescents with CH. Brain magnetic resonance imaging with analysis of 33 brain areas of each hemisphere was performed in 41 patients (29 girls) and in a control group of 20 healthy adolescents. CT values were correlated with Full-scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ) scores, age at start of treatment, pretreatment thyroxine levels, and maternal schooling.

RESULTS

No significant difference in CT between patients and controls were found. However, there was a trend toward thinning in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex among patients and in the right postcentral gyrus cortex among controls. CT correlated significantly with FSIQ scores and with age at start of treatment in 1 area, and with hypothyroidism severity in 5 brain areas. Maternal schooling level did not correlate with CT but was significantly correlated with FSIQ. Cognitive level was within average in 44.7% of patients (13.2% had intellectual deficiency).

CONCLUSION

There was a trend toward morphometric alterations in the cerebral cortex of adolescents with CH compared with healthy controls. The correlations between CT and variables of neurocognitive prognosis emphasize the influence of hypothyroidism on cortical development. Socioeconomic status exerts a limiting factor on cognitive outcome.

Vocal emotion perception in schizophrenia and its diagnostic significance

BACKGROUND

Cognitive and emotional impairment are among the core features of schizophrenia; assessment of vocal emotion recognition may facilitate the detection of schizophrenia. We explored the differences between cognitive and social aspects of emotion using vocal emotion recognition and detailed clinical characterization.

METHODS

Clinical symptoms and social and cognitive functioning were assessed by trained clinical psychiatrists. A vocal emotion perception test, including an assessment of emotion recognition and emotional intensity, was conducted. One-hundred-six patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and 230 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited.

RESULTS

Considering emotion recognition, scores for all emotion categories were significantly lower in SCZ compared to HC. Considering emotional intensity, scores for anger, calmness, sadness, and surprise were significantly lower in the SCZs. Vocal recognition patterns showed a trend of unification and simplification in SCZs. A direct correlation was confirmed between vocal recognition impairment and cognition. In diagnostic tests, only the total score of vocal emotion recognition was a reliable index for the presence of schizophrenia.

CONCLUSIONS

This study shows that patients with schizophrenia are characterized by impaired vocal emotion perception. Furthermore, explicit and implicit vocal emotion perception processing in individuals with schizophrenia are viewed as distinct entities. This study provides a voice recognition tool to facilitate and improve the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Trait anxiety modulates the detection sensitivity of negative affect in speech: an online pilot study

Acoustic perception of emotions in speech is relevant for humans to navigate the social environment optimally. While sensory perception is known to be influenced by ambient noise, and bodily internal states (e.g., emotional arousal and anxiety), their relationship to human auditory perception is relatively less understood. In a supervised, online pilot experiment sans the artificially controlled laboratory environment, we asked if the detection sensitivity of emotions conveyed by human speech-in-noise (acoustic signals) varies between individuals with relatively lower and higher levels of subclinical trait-anxiety, respectively. In a task, participants (n = 28) accurately discriminated the target emotion conveyed by the temporally unpredictable acoustic signals (signal to noise ratio = 10 dB), which were manipulated at four levels (Happy, Neutral, Fear, and Disgust). We calculated the empirical area under the curve (a measure of acoustic signal detection sensitivity) based on signal detection theory to answer our questions. A subset of individuals with High trait-anxiety relative to Low in the above sample showed significantly lower detection sensitivities to acoustic signals of negative emotions - Disgust and Fear and significantly lower detection sensitivities to acoustic signals when averaged across all emotions. The results from this pilot study with a small but statistically relevant sample size suggest that trait-anxiety levels influence the overall acoustic detection of speech-in-noise, especially those conveying threatening/negative affect. The findings are relevant for future research on acoustic perception anomalies underlying affective traits and disorders.

An fNIRS investigation of novel expressed emotion stimulations in schizophrenia

Living in high expressed emotion (EE) environments tends to increase the relapse rate in schizophrenia (SZ). At present, the neural substrates responsible for high EE in SZ remain poorly understood. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) may be of great use to quantitatively assess cortical hemodynamics and elucidate the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. In this study, we designed novel low- (positivity and warmth) and high-EE (criticism, negative emotion, and hostility) stimulations, in the form of audio, to investigate cortical hemodynamics. We used fNIRS to measure hemodynamic signals while participants listened to the recorded audio. Healthy controls (HCs, [Formula: see text]) showed increased hemodynamic activation in the major language centers across EE stimulations, with stronger activation in Wernicke's area during the processing of negative emotional language. Compared to HCs, people with SZ ([Formula: see text]) exhibited smaller hemodynamic activation in the major language centers across EE stimulations. In addition, people with SZ showed weaker or insignificant hemodynamic deactivation in the medial prefrontal cortex. Notably, hemodynamic activation in SZ was found to be negatively correlated with the negative syndrome scale score at high EE. Our findings suggest that the neural mechanisms in SZ are altered and disrupted, especially during negative emotional language processing. This supports the feasibility of using the designed EE stimulations to assess people who are vulnerable to high-EE environments, such as SZ. Furthermore, our findings provide preliminary evidence for future research on functional neuroimaging biomarkers for people with psychiatric disorders.

Emotional sounds in space: asymmetrical representation within early-stage auditory areas

Evidence from behavioral studies suggests that the spatial origin of sounds may influence the perception of emotional valence. Using 7T fMRI we have investigated the impact of the categories of sound (vocalizations; non-vocalizations), emotional valence (positive, neutral, negative) and spatial origin (left, center, right) on the encoding in early-stage auditory areas and in the voice area. The combination of these different characteristics resulted in a total of 18 conditions (2 categories x 3 valences x 3 lateralizations), which were presented in a pseudo-randomized order in blocks of 11 different sounds (of the same condition) in 12 distinct runs of 6 min. In addition, two localizers, i.e., tonotopy mapping; human vocalizations, were used to define regions of interest. A three-way repeated measure ANOVA on the BOLD responses revealed bilateral significant effects and interactions in the primary auditory cortex, the lateral early-stage auditory areas, and the voice area. Positive vocalizations presented on the left side yielded greater activity in the ipsilateral and contralateral primary auditory cortex than did neutral or negative vocalizations or any other stimuli at any of the three positions. Right, but not left area L3 responded more strongly to (i) positive vocalizations presented ipsi- or contralaterally than to neutral or negative vocalizations presented at the same positions; and (ii) to neutral than positive or negative non-vocalizations presented contralaterally. Furthermore, comparison with a previous study indicates that spatial cues may render emotional valence more salient within the early-stage auditory areas.

Music impacts brain cortical microstructural maturation in very preterm infants: A longitudinal diffusion MR imaging study

Preterm birth disrupts important neurodevelopmental processes occurring from mid-fetal to term-age. Musicotherapy, by enriching infants' sensory input, might enhance brain maturation during this critical period of activity-dependent plasticity. To study the impact of music on preterm infants' brain structural changes, we recruited 54 very preterm infants randomized to receive or not a daily music intervention, that have undergone a longitudinal multi-shell diffusion MRI acquisition, before the intervention (at 33 weeks' gestational age) and after it (at term-equivalent-age). Using whole-brain fixel-based (FBA) and NODDI analysis (n = 40), we showed a longitudinal increase of fiber cross-section (FC) and fiber density (FD) in all major cerebral white matter fibers. Regarding cortical grey matter, FD decreased while FC and orientation dispersion index (ODI) increased, reflecting intracortical multidirectional complexification and intracortical myelination. The music intervention resulted in a significantly higher longitudinal increase of FC and ODI in cortical paralimbic regions, namely the insulo-orbito-temporopolar complex, precuneus/posterior cingulate gyrus, as well as the auditory association cortex. Our results support a longitudinal early brain macro and microstructural maturation of white and cortical grey matter in preterm infants. The music intervention led to an increased intracortical complexity in regions important for socio-emotional development, known to be impaired in preterm infants.

Variations on the theme: focus on cerebellum and emotional processing

The cerebellum operates exploiting a complex modular organization and a unified computational algorithm adapted to different behavioral contexts. Recent observations suggest that the cerebellum is involved not just in motor but also in emotional and cognitive processing. It is therefore critical to identify the specific regional connectivity and microcircuit properties of the emotional cerebellum. Recent studies are highlighting the differential regional localization of genes, molecules, and synaptic mechanisms and microcircuit wiring. However, the impact of these regional differences is not fully understood and will require experimental investigation and computational modeling. This review focuses on the cellular and circuit underpinnings of the cerebellar role in emotion. And since emotion involves an integration of cognitive, somatomotor, and autonomic activity, we elaborate on the tradeoff between segregation and distribution of these three main functions in the cerebellum.

Perception of Prosody in Hearing-Impaired Individuals and Users of Hearing Assistive Devices: An Overview of Recent Advances

PURPOSE

Prosody perception is an essential component of speech communication and social interaction through which both linguistic and emotional information are conveyed. Considering the importance of the auditory system in processing prosody-related acoustic features, the aim of this review article is to review the effects of hearing impairment on prosody perception in children and adults. It also assesses the performance of hearing assistive devices in restoring prosodic perception.

METHOD

Following a comprehensive online database search, two lines of inquiry were targeted. The first summarizes recent attempts toward determining the effects of hearing loss and interacting factors such as age and cognitive resources on prosody perception. The second analyzes studies reporting beneficial or detrimental impacts of hearing aids, cochlear implants, and bimodal stimulation on prosodic abilities in people with hearing loss.

RESULTS

The reviewed studies indicate that hearing-impaired individuals vary widely in perceiving affective and linguistic prosody, depending on factors such as hearing loss severity, chronological age, and cognitive status. In addition, most of the emerging information points to limitations of hearing assistive devices in processing and transmitting the acoustic features of prosody.

CONCLUSIONS

The existing literature is incomplete in several respects, including the lack of a consensus on how and to what extent hearing prostheses affect prosody perception, especially the linguistic function of prosody, and a gap in assessing prosody under challenging listening situations such as noise. This review article proposes directions that future research could follow to provide a better understanding of prosody processing in those with hearing impairment, which may help health care professionals and designers of assistive technology to develop innovative diagnostic and rehabilitation tools.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21809772.

The emotional component of inner speech: A pilot exploratory fMRI study

Inner speech is one of the most important human cognitive processes. Nevertheless, until now, many aspects of inner speech, particularly the emotional characteristics of inner speech, remain poorly understood. The main objectives of our study are to identify the neural substrate for the emotional (prosodic) dimension of inner speech and brain structures that control the suppression of expression in inner speech. To achieve these goals, a pilot exploratory fMRI study was carried out on 33 people. The subjects listened to pre-recorded phrases or individual words pronounced with different emotional connotations, after which they were internally spoken with the same emotion or with suppression of expression (neutral). The results show that there is an emotional component in inner speech, which is encoded by similar structures as in spoken speech. The unique role of the caudate nuclei in the suppression of expression in the inner speech was also shown.

Dysfunctional cerebello-cerebral network associated with vocal emotion recognition impairments

Vocal emotion recognition, a key determinant to analyzing a speaker's emotional state, is known to be impaired following cerebellar dysfunctions. Nevertheless, its possible functional integration in the large-scale brain network subtending emotional prosody recognition has yet to be explored. We administered an emotional prosody recognition task to patients with right versus left-hemispheric cerebellar lesions and a group of matched controls. We explored the lesional correlates of vocal emotion recognition in patients through a network-based analysis by combining a neuropsychological approach for lesion mapping with normative brain connectome data. Results revealed impaired recognition among patients for neutral or negative prosody, with poorer sadness recognition performances by patients with right cerebellar lesion. Network-based lesion-symptom mapping revealed that sadness recognition performances were linked to a network connecting the cerebellum with left frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices. Moreover, when focusing solely on a subgroup of patients with right cerebellar damage, sadness recognition performances were associated with a more restricted network connecting the cerebellum to the left parietal lobe. As the left hemisphere is known to be crucial for the processing of short segmental information, these results suggest that a corticocerebellar network operates on a fine temporal scale during vocal emotion decoding.

Neural decoding of emotional prosody in voice-sensitive auditory cortex predicts social communication abilities in children

During social interactions, speakers signal information about their emotional state through their voice, which is known as emotional prosody. Little is known regarding the precise brain systems underlying emotional prosody decoding in children and whether accurate neural decoding of these vocal cues is linked to social skills. Here, we address critical gaps in the developmental literature by investigating neural representations of prosody and their links to behavior in children. Multivariate pattern analysis revealed that representations in the bilateral middle and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) divisions of voice-sensitive auditory cortex decode emotional prosody information in children. Crucially, emotional prosody decoding in middle STS was correlated with standardized measures of social communication abilities; more accurate decoding of prosody stimuli in the STS was predictive of greater social communication abilities in children. Moreover, social communication abilities were specifically related to decoding sadness, highlighting the importance of tuning in to negative emotional vocal cues for strengthening social responsiveness and functioning. Findings bridge an important theoretical gap by showing that the ability of the voice-sensitive cortex to detect emotional cues in speech is predictive of a child's social skills, including the ability to relate and interact with others.

Microsurgical anatomy and insular connectivity of the cerebral opercula

OBJECTIVE

Radiological, anatomical, and electrophysiological studies have shown the insula and cerebral opercula to have extremely high functionality. Because of this complexity, interventions in this region cause higher morbidity compared to those in other areas of the brain. In most early studies of the insula and white matter pathways, insular dissection was begun after the opercula were removed. In this study, the authors examined the insula and deep white matter pathways to evaluate the insula as a whole with the surrounding opercula.

METHODS

Twenty formalin-fixed adult cerebral hemispheres were studied using fiber microdissection techniques and examination of sectional anatomy. Dissections were performed from lateral to medial, medial to lateral, inferior to superior, and superior to inferior. A silicone brain model was used to show the normal gyral anatomy. Sections and fibers found at every stage of dissection were photographed with a professional camera. MRI tractography studies were used to aid understanding of the dissections.

RESULTS

The relationships between the insula and cerebral opercula were investigated in detail through multiple dissections and sections. The relationship of the extreme and external capsules with the surrounding opercula and the fronto-occipital fasciculus with the fronto-orbital operculum was demonstrated. These findings were correlated with the tractography studies. Fibers of the extreme capsule connect the medial aspect of the opercula with the insula through the peri-insular sulcus. Medial to lateral dissections were followed with the removal of the central core structures, and in the last step, the medial surface of the cerebral opercula was evaluated in detail.

CONCLUSIONS

This anatomical study clarifies our understanding of the insula and cerebral opercula, which have complex anatomical and functional networks. This study also brings a new perspective to the connection of the insula and cerebral opercula via the extreme and external capsules.

Aging and the Perception of Affective and Linguistic Prosody

Investigations of affective prosodic processing have demonstrated a decline with aging. It is unclear, however, whether this decline affects all or specific emotions. Also, little is known about the ability of syntactic resolution ambiguity with the use of prosody in aging. Twenty older (age range = 70-75) and 20 younger adults (age range = 20-25) performed an affective (happiness, neutrality, sadness, surprise, fear, and anger) and a linguistic (subject/object ambiguities) prosody task. Relative to young participants, older participants faced difficulty decoding affective prosody, particularly negative emotions, and syntactic prosody, in particular the subject reading condition. A marginally positive correlation was found between the affective and syntactic prosody tasks in the group of older individuals, but no gender differences in either prosodic task. The findings of the affective prosody task are discussed under the prism of the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory, whereas general parsing strategies can account for the preference for the object reading condition.

Crossed functional specialization between the basal ganglia and cerebellum during vocal emotion decoding: Insights from stroke and Parkinson’s disease

There is growing evidence that both the basal ganglia and the cerebellum play functional roles in emotion processing, either directly or indirectly, through their connections with cortical and subcortical structures. However, the lateralization of this complex processing in emotion recognition remains unclear. To address this issue, we investigated emotional prosody recognition in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (model of basal ganglia dysfunction) or cerebellar stroke patients, as well as in matched healthy controls (n = 24 in each group). We analysed performances according to the lateralization of the predominant brain degeneration/lesion. Results showed that a right (basal ganglia and cerebellar) hemispheric dysfunction was likely to induce greater deficits than a left one. Moreover, deficits following left hemispheric dysfunction were only observed in cerebellar stroke patients, and these deficits resembled those observed after degeneration of the right basal ganglia. Additional analyses taking disease duration / time since stroke into consideration revealed a worsening of performances in patients with predominantly right-sided lesions over time. These results point to the differential, but complementary, involvement of the cerebellum and basal ganglia in emotional prosody decoding, with a probable hemispheric specialization according to the level of cognitive integration.

Impaired Interhemispheric Synchrony in Parkinson’s Disease with Fatigue

The characteristics of interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity (FC) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) with fatigue remain unclear; therefore, we aimed to explore the changes in interhemispheric FC in PD patients with fatigue. Sixteen PD patients with fatigue (PDF), 16 PD patients without fatigue (PDNF) and 15 matched healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled in the retrospective cross-sectional study. We used voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) to analyze the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data of these subjects. Compared to PDNF, PDF patients had decreased VMHC values in the supramarginal gyri (SMG). Furthermore, the mean VMHC values of the SMG were negatively correlated with the mean fatigue severity scale (FSS/9) scores (r = −0.754, p = 0.001). Compared to HCs, PDF patients had decreased VMHC in the SMG and in the opercular parts of the inferior frontal gyri (IFG operc). The VMHC values in the IFG operc and middle frontal gyri (MFG) were notably decreased in PDNF patients compared with HCs. Our findings suggest that the reduced VMHC values within the bilateral SMG may be the unique imaging features of fatigue in PD, and may illuminate the neural mechanisms of fatigue in PD.

Comparative morphology and physiology of the vocal production apparatus and the brain in the extant primates

Objective data mainly from the comparative anatomy of various organs related to human speech and language is considered to unearth clues about the mechanisms behind language development. The two organs of the larynx and hyoid bone are considered to have evolved towards suitable positions and forms in preparation for the occurrence of the large repertoire of vocalization necessary for human speech. However, some researchers have asserted that there is no significant difference of these organs between humans and non-human primates. Speech production is dependent on the voluntary control of the respiratory, laryngeal, and vocal tract musculature. Such control is fully present in humans but only partially so in non-human primates, which appear to be able to voluntarily control only supralaryngeal articulators. Both humans and non-human primates have direct cortical innervation of motor neurons controlling the supralaryngeal vocal tract but only human appear to have direct cortical innervation of motor neurons controlling the larynx. In this review, we investigate the comparative morphology and function of the wide range of components involved in vocal production, including the larynx, the hyoid bone, the tongue, and the vocal brain. We would like to emphasize the importance of the tongue in the primary development of human speech and language. It is now time to reconsider the possibility of the tongue playing a definitive role in the emergence of human speech.

Imaging correlates of depression in progressive supranuclear palsy

Depression is highly common in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) and is a meaningful determinant of quality of life. However, neurobiological and neuroimaging correlates of this neuropsychiatric disturbance in PSP patients are still unknown. In this study, we aimed to investigate the topographical distribution of morphometric changes associated with depression in PSP patients using cortical thickness. Forty patients with PSP were evaluated at baseline with clinical rating scales and MRI scans. Based on the response to the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale we identified 21 PSP patients with depression (GDS-15 score ≥ 5) and 19 PSP patients without depression (GDS-15 score < 5). In vertex-wise analysis, comparison of cortical thickness between PSP patients with and without depression was performed using a general linear model. PSP patients with depressions showed reduced cortical thickness in temporo-parieto-occipital areas, more pronounced in the right hemisphere. These findings propose neurobiological conceptualizations of depression in PSP as being associated with a multiregional pattern of morphometric grey matter reduction.

Region-dependent Millisecond Time-scale Sensitivity in Spectrotemporal Integrations in Guinea Pig Primary Auditory Cortex

Spectrotemporal integration is a key function of our auditory system for discriminating spectrotemporally complex sounds, such as words. Response latency in the auditory cortex is known to change with the millisecond time-scale depending on acoustic parameters, such as sound frequency and intensity. The functional significance of the millisecond-range latency difference in the integration remains unclear. Actually, whether the auditory cortex has a sensitivity to the millisecond-range difference has not been systematically examined. Herein, we examined the sensitivity in the primary auditory cortex (A1) using voltage-sensitive dye imaging techniques in guinea pigs. Bandpass noise bursts in two different bands (band-noises), centered at 1 and 16 kHz, respectively, were used for the examination. Onset times of individual band-noises (spectral onset-times) were varied to virtually cancel or magnify the latency difference observed with the band-noises. Conventionally defined nonlinear effects in integration were analyzed at A1 with varying sound intensities (or response latencies) and/or spectral onset-times of the two band-noises. The nonlinear effect measured in the high-frequency region of the A1 linearly changed depending on the millisecond difference of the response onset-times, which were estimated from the spatially-local response latencies and spectral onset-times. In contrast, the low-frequency region of the A1 had no significant sensitivity to the millisecond difference. The millisecond-range latency difference may have functional significance in the spectrotemporal integration with the millisecond time-scale sensitivity at the high-frequency region of A1 but not at the low-frequency region.

Psychiatric sequelae of stroke affecting the non-dominant cerebral hemisphere

There are a plethora of cognitive sequelae in addition to neglect and extinction that arise with unilateral right hemispheric stroke (RHS). Cognitive deficits following non-dominant (right) hemisphere stroke are common with unilateral neglect and extinction being the most recognized examples. The severity of RHS is usually underestimated by the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), which in terms of lateralized right hemisphere cognitive deficits, tests only for visual inattention/extinction. They account for 2 out of 42 total possible points. Additional neuropsychiatric sequelae include but are not limited to deficiencies in affective prosody comprehension and production (aprosodias), understanding and expressing facial emotions, empathy, recognition of familiar faces, anxiety, mania, apathy, and psychosis. These sequelae have a profound impact on patients' quality of life; affecting communication, interpersonal relationships, and the ability to fulfill social roles. They also pose additional challenges to recovery. There is presently a gap in the literature regarding a cohesive overview of the significant cognitive sequelae following RHS. This paper serves as a narrative survey of the current understanding of the subject, with particular emphasis on neuropsychiatric poststroke syndromes not predominantly associated with left hemisphere lesions (LHL), bilateral lesions, hemiplegia, or paralysis. A more comprehensive understanding of the neuropsychological consequences of RHS extending beyond the typical associations of unilateral neglect and extinction may have important implications for clinical practice, including the ways in which clinicians approach diagnostics, treatment, and rehabilitation.

The miRNome of Depression

Depression is an effect of complex interactions between genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. It is well established that stress responses are associated with multiple modest and often dynamic molecular changes in the homeostatic balance, rather than with a single genetic factor that has a strong phenotypic penetration. As depression is a multifaceted phenotype, it is important to study biochemical pathways that can regulate the overall allostasis of the brain. One such biological system that has the potential to fine-tune a multitude of diverse molecular processes is RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is an epigenetic process showing a very low level of evolutionary diversity, and relies on the posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression using, in the case of mammals, primarily short (17–23 nucleotides) noncoding RNA transcripts called microRNAs (miRNA). In this review, our objective was to examine, summarize and discuss recent advances in the field of biomedical and clinical research on the role of miRNA-mediated regulation of gene expression in the development of depression. We focused on studies investigating post-mortem brain tissue of individuals with depression, as well as research aiming to elucidate the biomarker potential of miRNAs in depression and antidepressant response.

Lesion loci of impaired affective prosody: A systematic review of evidence from stroke

Affective prosody, or the changes in rate, rhythm, pitch, and loudness that convey emotion, has long been implicated as a function of the right hemisphere (RH), yet there is a dearth of literature identifying the specific neural regions associated with its processing. The current systematic review aimed to evaluate the evidence on affective prosody localization in the RH. One hundred and ninety articles from 1970 to February 2020 investigating affective prosody comprehension and production in patients with focal brain damage were identified via database searches. Eleven articles met inclusion criteria, passed quality reviews, and were analyzed for affective prosody localization. Acute, subacute, and chronic lesions demonstrated similar profile characteristics. Localized right antero-superior (i.e., dorsal stream) regions contributed to affective prosody production impairments, whereas damage to more postero-lateral (i.e., ventral stream) regions resulted in affective prosody comprehension deficits. This review provides support that distinct RH regions are vital for affective prosody comprehension and production, aligning with literature reporting RH activation for affective prosody processing in healthy adults as well. The impact of study design on resulting interpretations is discussed.

Multiple prosodic meanings are conveyed through separate pitch ranges: Evidence from perception of focus and surprise in Mandarin Chinese

F0 variation is a crucial feature in speech prosody, which can convey linguistic information such as focus and paralinguistic meanings such as surprise. How can multiple layers of information be represented with F0 in speech: are they divided into discrete layers of pitch or overlapped without clear divisions? We investigated this question by assessing pitch perception of focus and surprise in Mandarin Chinese. Seventeen native Mandarin listeners rated the strength of focus and surprise conveyed by the same set of synthetically manipulated sentences. An fMRI experiment was conducted to assess neural correlates of the listeners' perceptual response to the stimuli. The results showed that behaviourally, the perceptual threshold for focus was 3 semitones and that for surprise was 5 semitones above the baseline. Moreover, the pitch range of 5-12 semitones above the baseline signalled both focus and surprise, suggesting a considerable overlap between the two types of prosodic information within this range. The neuroimaging data positively correlated with the variations in behavioural data. Also, a ceiling effect was found as no significant behavioural differences or neural activities were shown after reaching a certain pitch level for the perception of focus and surprise respectively. Together, the results suggest that different layers of prosodic information are represented in F0 through different pitch ranges: paralinguistic information is represented at a pitch range beyond that used by linguistic information. Meanwhile, the representation of paralinguistic information is achieved without obscuring linguistic prosody, thus allowing F0 to represent the two layers of information in parallel.

Characterizing subtypes and neural correlates of receptive aprosodia in acute right hemisphere stroke

INTRODUCTION

Speakers naturally produce prosodic variations depending on their emotional state. Receptive prosody has several processing stages. We aimed to conduct lesion-symptom mapping to determine whether damage (core infarct or hypoperfusion) to specific brain areas was associated with receptive aprosodia or with impairment at different processing stages in individuals with acute right hemisphere stroke. We also aimed to determine whether different subtypes of receptive aprosodia exist that are characterized by distinctive behavioral performance patterns.

METHODS

Twenty patients with receptive aprosodia following right hemisphere ischemic stroke were enrolled within five days of stroke; clinical imaging was acquired. Participants completed tests of receptive emotional prosody, and tests of each stage of prosodic processing (Stage 1: acoustic analysis; Stage 2: analyzing abstract representations of acoustic characteristics that convey emotion; Stage 3: semantic processing). Emotional facial recognition was also assessed. LASSO regression was used to identify predictors of performance on each behavioral task. Predictors entered into each model included 14 right hemisphere regions, hypoperfusion in four vascular territories as measured using FLAIR hyperintense vessel ratings, lesion volume, age, and education. A k-medoid cluster analysis was used to identify different subtypes of receptive aprosodia based on performance on the behavioral tasks.

RESULTS

Impaired receptive emotional prosody and impaired emotional facial expression recognition were both predicted by greater percent damage to the caudate. The k-medoid cluster analysis identified three different subtypes of aprosodia. One group was primarily impaired on Stage 1 processing and primarily had frontotemporal lesions. The second group had a domain-general emotion recognition impairment and maximal lesion overlap in subcortical areas. Finally, the third group was characterized by a Stage 2 processing deficit and had lesion overlap in posterior regions.

CONCLUSIONS

Subcortical structures, particularly the caudate, play an important role in emotional prosody comprehension. Receptive aprosodia can result from impairments at different processing stages.

Temporal division of the decision-making process: An EEG study

Decision-making is a process that allows individuals to choose an option or alternative in order to maximize a subjective gain or achieve a set goal by evaluating and establishing a preference based on contextual and internal information. Ernst and Paulus proposed a three-stage temporal division of this process: 1) the assessment and formation of preferences among possible options; 2) the selection and execution of an action; and 3) the experience or evaluation of an outcome. Each stage involves the participation of several brain regions, including the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices. There are reports of distinct functionalities of these cortices for each stage of decision-making, but those studies focus on individual stages and do not provide any direct comparisons among them. Therefore, using a task that allows the clear temporal separation of the three stages of decision-making, we characterized the electroencephalographic activity (EEG) of those cortices in 30 healthy right-handed men during preference changes that occurred while performing a decision-making task. As the trials progressed, the preference for the stimulus shifted towards maximizing gains on the task. Forty trials sufficed to maintain these behavioral changes. Specific EEG patterns for each stage of decision-making were obtained, and it was possible to associate them with the cognitive processes involved in each one. These EEG data support the temporal division of the decision-making process proposed by Ernest and Paulus and show that the task designed could be a useful tool for determining behavioral and cerebral changes associated with stimuli preference during decision-making.

Identifying a Common Functional Framework for Apathy Large-Scale Brain Network

Apathy is a neuropsychiatric condition characterized by reduced motivation, initiative, and interest in daily life activities, and it is commonly reported in several neurodegenerative disorders. The study aims to investigate large-scale brain networks involved in apathy syndrome in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) compared to a group of healthy controls (HC). The study sample includes a total of 60 subjects: 20 apathetic FTD and PD patients, 20 non apathetic FTD and PD patients, and 20 HC matched for age. Two disease-specific apathy-evaluation scales were used to measure the presence of apathy in FTD and PD patients; in the same day, a 3T brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with structural and resting-state functional (fMRI) sequences was acquired. Differences in functional connectivity (FC) were assessed between apathetic and non-apathetic patients with and without primary clinical diagnosis revealed, using a whole-brain, seed-to-seed approach. A significant hypoconnectivity between apathetic patients (both FTD and PD) and HC was detected between left planum polare and both right pre- or post-central gyrus. Finally, to investigate whether such neural alterations were due to the underlying neurodegenerative pathology, we replicated the analysis by considering two independent patients’ samples (i.e., non-apathetic PD and FTD). In these groups, functional differences were no longer detected. These alterations may subtend the involvement of neural pathways implicated in a specific reduction of information/elaboration processing and motor outcome in apathetic patients.

Sensory contribution to vocal emotion deficit in patients with cerebellar stroke

In recent years, there has been increasing evidence of cerebellar involvement in emotion processing. Difficulties in the recognition of emotion from voices (i.e., emotional prosody) have been observed following cerebellar stroke. However, the interplay between sensory and higher-order cognitive dysfunction in these deficits, as well as possible hemispheric specialization for emotional prosody processing, has yet to be elucidated. We investigated the emotional prosody recognition performances of patients with right versus left cerebellar lesions, as well as of matched controls, entering the acoustic features of the stimuli in our statistical model. We also explored the cerebellar lesion-behavior relationship, using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Results revealed impairment of vocal emotion recognition in both patient subgroups, particularly for neutral or negative prosody, with a higher number of misattributions in patients with right-hemispheric stroke. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping showed that some emotional misattributions correlated with lesions in the right Lobules VIIb and VIII and right Crus I and II. Furthermore, a significant proportion of the variance in this misattribution was explained by acoustic features such as pitch, loudness, and spectral aspects. These results point to bilateral posterior cerebellar involvement in both the sensory and cognitive processing of emotions.

Neurophysiological Synchrony Between Children With Severe Physical Disabilities and Their Parents During Music Therapy

Although physiological synchronization has been associated with the level of empathy in emotionally meaningful relationships, little is known about the interbrain synchrony between non-speaking children with severe disabilities and their familial caregivers. In a repeated measures observational study, we ascertained the degree of interbrain synchrony during music therapy in 10 child-parent dyads, where the children were non-speaking and living with severe motor impairments. Interbrain synchrony was quantified via measurements of spectral coherence and Granger causality between child and parent electroencephalographic (EEG) signals collected during ten 15-min music therapy sessions per dyad, where parents were present as non-participating, covert observers. Using cluster-based permutation tests, we found significant child-parent interbrain synchrony, manifesting most prominently across dyads in frontal brain regions within β and low γ frequencies. Specifically, significant dyadic coherence was observed contra-laterally, between child frontal right and parental frontal left regions at β and lower γ bands in empathy-related brain areas. Furthermore, significant Granger influences were detected bidirectionally (from child to parent and vice versa) in the same frequency bands. In all dyads, significant increases in session-specific coherence and Granger influences were observed over the time course of a music therapy session. The observed interbrain synchrony suggests a cognitive-emotional coupling during music therapy between child and parent that is responsive to change. These findings encourage further study of the socio-empathic capacity and interpersonal relationships formed between caregivers and non-speaking children with severe physical impairments.

Myeloarchitectonic Asymmetries of Language Regions in the Human Brain

One prominent theory in neuroscience and psychology assumes that cortical regions for language are left hemisphere lateralized in the human brain. In the current study, we used a novel technique, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI), to examine interhemispheric asymmetries in language regions in terms of macromolecular tissue volume (MTV) and quantitative longitudinal relaxation time (T1) maps in the living human brain. These two measures are known to reflect cortical myeloarchitecture from the microstructural perspective. One hundred and fifteen adults (55 male, 60 female) were examined for their myeloarchitectonic asymmetries of language regions. We found that the cortical myeloarchitecture of inferior frontal areas including the pars opercularis, pars triangularis, and pars orbitalis is left lateralized, while that of the middle temporal gyrus, Heschl’s gyrus, and planum temporale is right lateralized. Moreover, the leftward lateralization of myelination structure is significantly correlated with language skills measured by phonemic and speech tone awareness. This study reveals for the first time a mixed pattern of myeloarchitectonic asymmetries, which calls for a general theory to accommodate the full complexity of principles underlying human hemispheric specialization.

Altered structure and functional connectivity of the hippocampus are associated with social and mathematical difficulties in nonverbal learning disability

The hippocampus is known to play a critical role in a variety of complex abilities, including visual-spatial reasoning, social functioning, and math. Nonverbal learning disability (NVLD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in visual-spatial reasoning that are accompanied by impairment in social function or mathematics, as well as motor or executive function skills. Despite the overlap between behaviors supported by the hippocampus and impairments in NVLD, the structure and function of the hippocampus in NVLD has not been studied. To address this gap in the literature, we first compared hippocampal volume and resting-state functional connectivity in children with NVLD (n = 24) and typically developing (TD) children (n = 20). We then explored associations between hippocampal structure, connectivity, and performance on measures of spatial, social, and mathematical ability. Relative to TD children, those with NVLD showed significant reductions in left hippocampal volume and greater hippocampal-cerebellar connectivity. In children with NVLD, reduced hippocampal volume associated with worse mathematical problem solving. Although children with NVLD exhibited more social problems (social responsiveness scale [SRS]) and higher hippocampal-cerebellar connectivity relative to TD children, greater connectivity was associated with fewer social problems among children with NVLD but not TD children. Such an effect may suggest a compensatory mechanism. These structural and functional alterations of the hippocampus may disrupt its putative role in organizing conceptual frameworks through cognitive mapping, thus contributing to the cross-domain difficulties that characterize NVLD.

Preterm birth leads to impaired rich-club organization and fronto-paralimbic/limbic structural connectivity in newborns

Prematurity disrupts brain development during a critical period of brain growth and organization and is known to be associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental impairments. Investigating whole-brain structural connectivity alterations accompanying preterm birth may provide a better comprehension of the neurobiological mechanisms related to the later neurocognitive deficits observed in this population. Using a connectome approach, we aimed to study the impact of prematurity on neonatal whole-brain structural network organization at term-equivalent age. In this cohort study, twenty-four very preterm infants at term-equivalent age (VPT-TEA) and fourteen full-term (FT) newborns underwent a brain MRI exam at term age, comprising T2-weighted imaging and diffusion MRI, used to reconstruct brain connectomes by applying probabilistic constrained spherical deconvolution whole-brain tractography. The topological properties of brain networks were quantified through a graph-theoretical approach. Furthermore, edge-wise connectivity strength was compared between groups. Overall, VPT-TEA infants' brain networks evidenced increased segregation and decreased integration capacity, revealed by an increased clustering coefficient, increased modularity, increased characteristic path length, decreased global efficiency and diminished rich-club coefficient. Furthermore, in comparison to FT, VPT-TEA infants had decreased connectivity strength in various cortico-cortical, cortico-subcortical and intra-subcortical networks, the majority of them being intra-hemispheric fronto-paralimbic and fronto-limbic. Inter-hemispheric connectivity was also decreased in VPT-TEA infants, namely through connections linking to the left precuneus or left dorsal cingulate gyrus - two regions that were found to be hubs in FT but not in VPT-TEA infants. Moreover, posterior regions from Default-Mode-Network (DMN), namely precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus, had decreased structural connectivity in VPT-TEA group. Our finding that VPT-TEA infants' brain networks displayed increased modularity, weakened rich-club connectivity and diminished global efficiency compared to FT infants suggests a delayed transition from a local architecture, focused on short-range connections, to a more distributed architecture with efficient long-range connections in those infants. The disruption of connectivity in fronto-paralimbic/limbic and posterior DMN regions might underlie the behavioral and social cognition difficulties previously reported in the preterm population.

Children and adolescents' neural response to emotional faces and voices: Age-related changes in common regions of activation

The perception of facial and vocal emotional expressions engages overlapping regions of the brain. However, at a behavioral level, the ability to recognize the intended emotion in both types of nonverbal cues follows a divergent developmental trajectory throughout childhood and adolescence. The current study a) identified regions of common neural activation to facial and vocal stimuli in 8- to 19-year-old typically-developing adolescents, and b) examined age-related changes in blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) response within these areas. Both modalities elicited activation in an overlapping network of subcortical regions (insula, thalamus, dorsal striatum), visual-motor association areas, prefrontal regions (inferior frontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex), and the right superior temporal gyrus. Within these regions, increased age was associated with greater frontal activation to voices, but not faces. Results suggest that processing facial and vocal stimuli elicits activation in common areas of the brain in adolescents, but that age-related changes in response within these regions may vary by modality.

Neuroticism in temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with altered limbic-frontal lobe resting-state functional connectivity

Neuroticism, a core personality trait characterized by a tendency towards experiencing negative affect, has been reported to be higher in people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) compared with healthy individuals. Neuroticism is a known predictor of depression and anxiety, which also occur more frequently in people with TLE. The purpose of this study was to identify abnormalities in whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity in relation to neuroticism in people with TLE and to determine the degree of unique versus shared patterns of abnormal connectivity in relation to elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety. Ninety-three individuals with TLE (55 females) and 40 healthy controls (18 females) from the Epilepsy Connectome Project (ECP) completed measures of neuroticism, depression, and anxiety, which were all significantly higher in people with TLE compared with controls. Resting-state functional connectivity was compared between controls and groups with TLE with high and low neuroticism using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test. In secondary analyses, the same analytics were performed using measures of depression and anxiety and the unique variance in resting-state connectivity associated with neuroticism independent of symptoms of depression and anxiety identified. Increased neuroticism was significantly associated with hyposynchrony between the right hippocampus and Brodmann area (BA) 9 (region of prefrontal cortex (PFC)) (p < 0.005), representing a unique relationship independent of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Hyposynchrony of connection between the right hippocampus and BA47 (anterior frontal operculum) was associated with high neuroticism and with higher depression and anxiety scores (p < 0.05), making it a shared abnormal connection for the three measures. In conclusion, increased neuroticism exhibits both unique and shared patterns of abnormal functional connectivity with depression and anxiety symptoms between regions of the mesial temporal and frontal lobe.

Multilevel fMRI adaptation for spoken word processing in the awake dog brain

Human brains process lexical meaning separately from emotional prosody of speech at higher levels of the processing hierarchy. Recently we demonstrated that dog brains can also dissociate lexical and emotional prosodic information in human spoken words. To better understand the neural dynamics of lexical processing in the dog brain, here we used an event-related design, optimized for fMRI adaptation analyses on multiple time scales. We investigated repetition effects in dogs’ neural (BOLD) responses to lexically marked (praise) words and to lexically unmarked (neutral) words, in praising and neutral prosody. We identified temporally and anatomically distinct adaptation patterns. In a subcortical auditory region, we found both short- and long-term fMRI adaptation for emotional prosody, but not for lexical markedness. In multiple cortical auditory regions, we found long-term fMRI adaptation for lexically marked compared to unmarked words. This lexical adaptation showed right-hemisphere bias and was age-modulated in a near-primary auditory region and was independent of prosody in a secondary auditory region. Word representations in dogs’ auditory cortex thus contain more than just the emotional prosody they are typically associated with. These findings demonstrate multilevel fMRI adaptation effects in the dog brain and are consistent with a hierarchical account of spoken word processing.

Acute oxytocin effects in inferring others' beliefs and social emotions in people at clinical high risk for psychosis

Social deficits are key hallmarks of the Clinical High Risk for Psychosis (CHR-P) state and of established psychotic disorders, and contribute to impaired social functioning, indicating a potential target for interventions. However, current treatments do not significantly ameliorate social impairments in CHR-P individuals. Given its critical role in social behaviour and cognition, the oxytocinergic (OT) system is a promising target for novel interventions in CHR-P subjects. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, 30 CHR-P males were studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on two occasions, once after 40IU self-administered intranasal OT and once after placebo. A modified version of the Sally-Anne task was used to assess brain activation during inferring others' beliefs and social emotions. The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test was acquired prior to the first scan to test whether OT effects were moderated by baseline social-emotional abilities. OT did not modulate behavioural performances but reduced activation in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus compared with placebo while inferring others' social emotions. Furthermore, the relationship between brain activation and task performance after OT administration was moderated by baseline social-emotional abilities. While task accuracy during inferring others' social emotion increased with decreasing activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in CHR-P individuals with low social-emotional abilities, there was no such relationship in CHR-P individuals with high social-emotional abilities. Our findings may suggest that acute OT administration enhances neural efficiency in the inferior frontal gyrus during inferring others' social emotions in those CHR-P subjects with low baseline social-emotional abilities.

Neural Correlates of Voice Perception in Newborns and the Influence of Preterm Birth

Maternal voice is a highly relevant stimulus for newborns. Adult voice processing occurs in specific brain regions. Voice-specific brain areas in newborns and the relevance of an early vocal exposure on these networks have not been defined. This study investigates voice perception in newborns and the impact of prematurity on the cerebral processes. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and high-density electroencephalography (EEG) were used to explore the brain responses to maternal and stranger female voices in full-term newborns and preterm infants at term-equivalent age (TEA). fMRI results and the EEG oddball paradigm showed enhanced processing for voices in preterms at TEA than in full-term infants. Preterm infants showed additional cortical regions involved in voice processing in fMRI and a late mismatch response for maternal voice, considered as a first trace of a recognition process based on memory representation. Full-term newborns showed increased cerebral activity to the stranger voice. Results from fMRI, oddball, and standard auditory EEG paradigms highlighted important change detection responses to novelty after birth. These findings suggest that the main components of the adult voice-processing networks emerge early in development. Moreover, an early postnatal exposure to voices in premature infants might enhance their capacity to process voices.

Uncovering electrophysiological and vascular signatures of implicit emotional prosody

The capability of differentiating between various emotional states in speech displays a crucial prerequisite for successful social interactions. The aim of the present study was to investigate neural processes underlying this differentiating ability by applying a simultaneous neuroscientific approach in order to gain both electrophysiological (via electroencephalography, EEG) and vascular (via functional near-infrared-spectroscopy, fNIRS) responses. Pseudowords conforming to angry, happy, and neutral prosody were presented acoustically to participants using a passive listening paradigm in order to capture implicit mechanisms of emotional prosody processing. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed a larger P200 and an increased late positive potential (LPP) for happy prosody as well as larger negativities for angry and neutral prosody compared to happy prosody around 500 ms. FNIRS results showed increased activations for angry prosody at right fronto-temporal areas. Correlation between negativity in the EEG and activation in fNIRS for angry prosody suggests analogous underlying processes resembling a negativity bias. Overall, results indicate that mechanisms of emotional and phonological encoding (P200), emotional evaluation (increased negativities) as well as emotional arousal and relevance (LPP) are present during implicit processing of emotional prosody.

ERP Markers of Valence Coding in Emotional Speech Processing

How is auditory emotional information processed? The study's aim was to compare cerebral responses to emotionally positive or negative spoken phrases matched for structure and content. Twenty participants listened to 198 vocal stimuli while detecting filler phrases containing first names. EEG was recorded from 128 sites. Three event-related potential (ERP) components were quantified and found to be sensitive to emotional valence since 350 ms of latency. P450 and late positivity were enhanced by positive content, whereas anterior negativity was larger to negative content. A similar set of markers (P300, N400, LP) was found previously for the processing of positive versus negative affective vocalizations, prosody, and music, which suggests a common neural mechanism for extracting the emotional content of auditory information. SwLORETA applied to potentials recorded between 350 and 550 ms showed that negative speech activated the right temporo/parietal areas (BA40, BA20/21), whereas positive speech activated the left homologous and inferior frontal areas.

What you say versus how you say it: Comparing sentence comprehension and emotional prosody processing using fMRI

While language processing is often described as lateralized to the left hemisphere (LH), the processing of emotion carried by vocal intonation is typically attributed to the right hemisphere (RH) and more specifically, to areas mirroring the LH language areas. However, the evidence base for this hypothesis is inconsistent, with some studies supporting right-lateralization but others favoring bilateral involvement in emotional prosody processing. Here we compared fMRI activations for an emotional prosody task with those for a sentence comprehension task in 20 neurologically healthy adults, quantifying lateralization using a lateralization index. We observed right-lateralized frontotemporal activations for emotional prosody that roughly mirrored the left-lateralized activations for sentence comprehension. In addition, emotional prosody also evoked bilateral activation in pars orbitalis (BA47), amygdala, and anterior insula. These findings are consistent with the idea that analysis of the auditory speech signal is split between the hemispheres, possibly according to their preferred temporal resolution, with the left preferentially encoding phonetic and the right encoding prosodic information. Once processed, emotional prosody information is fed to domain-general emotion processing areas and integrated with semantic information, resulting in additional bilateral activations.

Music enhances structural maturation of emotional processing neural pathways in very preterm infants

Prematurity disrupts brain maturation by exposing the developing brain to different noxious stimuli present in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and depriving it from meaningful sensory inputs during a critical period of brain development, leading to later neurodevelopmental impairments. Musicotherapy in the NICU environment has been proposed to promote sensory stimulation, relevant for activity-dependent brain plasticity, but its impact on brain structural maturation is unknown. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that music listening triggers neural substrates implied in socio-emotional processing and, thus, it might influence networks formed early in development and known to be affected by prematurity. Using multi-modal MRI, we aimed to evaluate the impact of a specially composed music intervention during NICU stay on preterm infant's brain structure maturation. 30 preterm newborns (out of which 15 were exposed to music during NICU stay and 15 without music intervention) and 15 full-term newborns underwent an MRI examination at term-equivalent age, comprising diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), used to evaluate white matter maturation using both region-of-interest and seed-based tractography approaches, as well as a T2-weighted image, used to perform amygdala volumetric analysis. Overall, WM microstructural maturity measured through DTI metrics was reduced in preterm infants receiving the standard-of-care in comparison to full-term newborns, whereas preterm infants exposed to the music intervention demonstrated significantly improved white matter maturation in acoustic radiations, external capsule/claustrum/extreme capsule and uncinate fasciculus, as well as larger amygdala volumes, in comparison to preterm infants with standard-of-care. These results suggest a structural maturational effect of the proposed music intervention on premature infants' auditory and emotional processing neural pathways during a key period of brain development.

The human amygdala disconnecting from auditory cortex preferentially discriminates musical sound of uncertain emotion by altering hemispheric weighting

How do humans discriminate emotion from non-emotion? The specific psychophysical cues and neural responses involved with resolving emotional information in sound are unknown. In this study we used a discrimination psychophysical-fMRI sparse sampling paradigm to locate threshold responses to happy and sad acoustic stimuli. The fine structure and envelope of auditory signals were covaried to vary emotional certainty. We report that emotion identification at threshold in music utilizes fine structure cues. The auditory cortex was activated but did not vary with emotional uncertainty. Amygdala activation was modulated by emotion identification and was absent when emotional stimuli were chance identifiable, especially in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere amygdala was considerably more deactivated in response to uncertain emotion. The threshold of emotion was signified by a right amygdala deactivation and change of left amygdala greater than right amygdala activation. Functional sex differences were noted during binaural uncertain emotional stimuli presentations, where the right amygdala showed larger activation in females. Negative control (silent stimuli) experiments investigated sparse sampling of silence to ensure modulation effects were inherent to emotional resolvability. No functional modulation of Heschl's gyrus occurred during silence; however, during rest the amygdala baseline state was asymmetrically lateralized. The evidence indicates changing hemispheric activation and deactivation patterns between the left and right amygdala is a hallmark feature of discriminating emotion from non-emotion in music.