On Emotional Conflict: Interference Resolution of Happy and Angry Prosody Reveals Valence-Specific Effects

Abstract

To comprehend emotional prosodic cues in speech is a critical function of human social life. However, it is common in everyday communication that conflicting information in emotional prosody and semantic content co-occur. Here, we sought to specify brain regions involved in conflict monitoring of these interfering communication channels. By means of functional magnetic resonance imaging, we obtained signal increases in the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and right superior temporal gyrus (STG) and superior temporal sulcus when participants listened to incongruous compared with congruous sentences. Moreover, valence-specific effects were found in the left inferior frontal gyrus and left STG for happily intoned sentences expressing a negative content. The left caudate nucleus along with the thalamus was active when angrily intoned sentences were coupled with positive semantic content. Our results suggest a brain network that monitors conflict in emotional prosody and emotional semantic content comprising of medial prefrontal areas that have previously been associated with cognitive conflict processing. Furthermore, our study extends the knowledge of these processes by suggesting valence-specific differences of emotional conflict processing.

Valence-specific conflict moderation in the dorso-medial PFC and the caudate head in emotional speech

“…Results confirm the involvement of the above described fronto-striato-temporal network, but extend it to areas responding to incongruity or conflict: (i) the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), more generally ascribed to conflict resolution (e.g. Kanske and Kotz, 2011a,b) and (ii) valence-specific responses in the caudate nucleus/ thalamus (Wittfoth et al, 2010). In light of recent seminal work on cognitive and affective conflict that has implicated the role of the dACC/medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in monitoring predictions of action outcomes in specific task contexts (Alexander and Brown, 2011;Egner, 2011), the question arises whether a mixed communicative signal (e.g.…”

“…In an attempt to specify how verbal and non-verbal vocal emotion expressions interact, recent imaging studies have started to utilize incongruity paradigms (Schirmer et al, 2004;Mitchell, 2006a,b;Wittfoth et al, 2010). Results confirm the involvement of the above described fronto-striato-temporal network, but extend it to areas responding to incongruity or conflict: (i) the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), more generally ascribed to conflict resolution (e.g.…”

“…However, communicating emotions is a complex process and, at times, marked by incongruity that leads to problems in decoding what a speaker intends to say (e.g. Schirmer et al, 2004;Mitchell, 2006a,b;Wittfoth et al, 2010). For example, in a professional conversation you generally do not expect someone to raise their voice in anger.…”

“…On the other hand, a mismatch between positive verbal content and an angry tone of voice may engage subcomponents of the basal ganglia (e.g. caudate; Wittfoth et al, 2010) in support of a valence-specific response to an unexpected action outcome in emotional speech.…”

Minho Affective Sentences (MAS): Probing the roles of sex, mood, and empathy in affective ratings of verbal stimuli

“…Therefore, a sentences battery stands out as a valuable resource for emotion research. It can be used, for example, to probe how semantic and prosodic types of information are integrated when they are congruent or incongruent (e.g., Wittfoth et al, 2010), or to probe the comprehension of emotional meaning in healthy subjects, in patients with brain lesions (e.g., Lalande, Braun, Charlebois, & Whitaker, 1992), or in psychopathological disorders characterized by altered emotional processing, such as schizophrenia (e.g., Pinheiro, del Re, Mezin, et al, 2013;Pinheiro et al, 2014).…”