We investigated the cortical representation of emotional prosody in normal‐hearing listeners using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and behavioural assessments. Consistent with previous reports, listeners relied most heavily on F0 cues when recognizing emotion cues; performance was relatively poor—and highly variable between listeners—when only intensity and speech‐rate cues were available. Using fNIRS to image cortical activity to speech utterances containing natural and reduced prosodic cues, we found right superior temporal gyrus (STG) to be most sensitive to emotional prosody, but no emotion‐specific cortical activations, suggesting that while fNIRS might be suited to investigating cortical mechanisms supporting speech processing it is less suited to investigating cortical haemodynamic responses to individual vocal emotions. Manipulating emotional speech to render F0 cues less informative, we found the amplitude of the haemodynamic response in right STG to be significantly correlated with listeners' abilities to recognise vocal emotions with uninformative F0 cues. Specifically, listeners more able to assign emotions to speech with degraded F0 cues showed lower haemodynamic responses to these degraded signals. This suggests a potential objective measure of behavioural sensitivity to vocal emotions that might benefit neurodiverse populations less sensitive to emotional prosody or hearing‐impaired listeners, many of whom rely on listening technologies such as hearing aids and cochlear implants—neither of which restore, and often further degrade, the F0 cues essential to parsing emotional prosody conveyed in speech.

We investigated the cortical representation of emotional prosody in normal-hearing listeners using functional near-infrared spectroscopy and behavourial assessments. Consistent with previous reports, listeners relied most heavily on F0 cues when recognizing emotion cues; performance was relatively poor—and highly variable between listeners—when only intensity and speech-rate cues were available. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to image cortical activity to speech utterances containing natural and reduced prosodic cues, we found right superior temporal gyrus (STG) to be most sensitive to emotional prosody, but no emotion-specific cortical activations, suggesting that whilst fNIRS might be suited to investigating cortical mechanisms supporting speech processing it is less suited to investigating cortical haemodynamic responses to individual vocal emotions. Manipulating emotional speech to render F0 cues less informative, we found the amplitude of the haemodynamic response in right STG to be significantly correlated with listeners’ abilities to recognise vocal emotions with uninformative F0 cues. Specifically, listeners more able to assign emotions to speech with degraded F0 cues showed lower haemodynamic responses to these degraded signals. This suggests a potential objective measure of behavioural sensitivity to vocal emotions that might benefit neurodiverse populations less sensitive to emotional prosody or hearing-impaired listeners, many of whom rely on listening technologies such as hearing aids and cochlear implants—neither of which restore, and often further degrade, the F0 cues essential to parsing emotional prosody conveyed in speech.

It is well established that observation by an audience can improve performance on various cognitive tasks. More recently, it has come to light that developing motor synchrony with a peer (through interventions such as the mirror game) can also yield collaborative, cognitive, and social benefits. The combined and relative advantages offered by audience and synchronisation effects are not yet understood. It is important to address this gap to determine whether synchronising activities might amplify the positive effects of an audience. In this pre-registered study, we investigate the extent to which response inhibition may be improved when observed by a synchronised peer. We compare behavioural and cortical (functional near-infrared spectroscopy; fNIRS) measures of inhibition between synchronised and non-synchronised dyads and find that the presence of a synchronised peer-audience introduces a speed-accuracy trade-off. This co-occurs with cortical activation in bilateral inferior frontal and middle prefrontal cortices, which are implicated in monitoring and maintenance of social alignment. Our findings have the potential to inform the rehabilitation of inhibition and social skills in clinical settings.