Title
Cerebral pathways in processing of affective prosody: a dynamic causal modeling study.
Abstract
This study was conducted to investigate the connectivity architecture of neural structures involved in processing of emotional speech melody (prosody). 24 subjects underwent event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while rating the emotional valence of either prosody or semantics of binaurally presented adjectives. Conventional analysis of fMRI data revealed activation within the right posterior middle temporal gyrus and bilateral inferior frontal cortex during evaluation of affective prosody and left temporal pole, orbitofrontal, and medial superior frontal cortex during judgment of affective semantics. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) in combination with Bayes factors was used to compare competing neurophysiological models with different intrinsic connectivity structures and input regions within the network of brain regions underlying comprehension of affective prosody. Comparison on group level revealed superiority of a model in which the right temporal cortex serves as input region as compared to models in which one of the frontal areas is assumed to receive external inputs. Moreover, models with parallel information conductance from the right temporal cortex were superior to models in which the two frontal lobes accomplish serial processing steps. In conclusion, connectivity analysis supports the view that evaluation of affective prosody requires prior analysis of acoustic features within the temporal and that transfer of information from the temporal cortex to the frontal lobes occurs via parallel pathways.
Year
DOI
Venue
2006
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.09.059
NeuroImage
Keywords
Field
DocType
Connectivity,Dynamic causal modeling,Emotion,Non-verbal,Prosody
Prosody,Developmental psychology,Neurophysiology,Functional magnetic resonance imaging,Serial memory processing,Emotional lateralization,Psychology,Cognitive psychology,Posterior parietal cortex,Temporal dynamics of music and language,Middle temporal gyrus
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
30
2
1053-8119
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
18
1.32
7
Authors
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Thomas Ethofer11039.86
Silke Anders2414.52
Michael Erb39513.70
Cornelia Herbert4498.06
Sarah Wiethoff5493.98
Johanna Kissler6202.73
Wolfgang Grodd78913.69
Dirk Wildgruber88312.82