Preliminary findings on the relation between the personality trait of stress reaction and the central neural control of human vocalization

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to examine whether the personality trait of stress reaction (SR), as assessed with the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-Brief Form (MPQ-BF), (1) influences prefrontal and limbic area activity during overt sentence reading and if (2) SR and associated individual differences in prefrontal and limbic activations correlate with sensorimotor cortical activity during overt sentence reading. Ten vocally healthy adults (22-57 years) participated in a functional MRI study using an event-related sparse sampling design to acquire brain activation data during sentence production tasks (covert, whispered, overt). The outcome measure was the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal change in prefrontal, limbic, and primary somatosensory (S1) and motor cortices (M1). Significant positive correlations were found between SR scores and S1, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (both r =.73, p <.05), and periaqueductal gray (r =.88, p <.01) activity. M1 activity was positively correlated with SR (r =.64, p <.05) and negatively with social potency (r = -.70, p <.05). Our findings suggest that motor cortical control subserving voice and speech production varies with expression of selected personality traits. Future studies should investigate the functional significance of personality differences in the central neural control of vocalization.

Mild Developmental Foreign Accent Syndrome and Psychiatric Comorbidity: Altered White Matter Integrity in Speech and Emotion Regulation Networks

“…The involvement of some regions (insula and cingulate gyrus) related to the emergence of foreign accent are also important for the expression personality traits (neuroticism and alexithymia) and psychiatric disorders (OCD, anxiety, social phobia, PTSD, depression, apathy, and hopelessness) diagnosed in our subjects ( Pujol et al, 2004 ; Servaas et al, 2013 ; van der Velde et al, 2013 ; Aghajani et al, 2014 ; LeWinn et al, 2014 ; Piras et al, 2015 ). Involvement of these regions and also of frontal lobe regions (middle frontal gyrus) important for motor control of voice and speech production might explain in our subjects the dysfunctional interaction between personality traits, response to stress, and speech production ( Dietrich et al, 2012 ). Thus, an altered interplay between biological trait-like diathesis (shyness and neuroticism) and the stressful experience of living with DFAS might explain the development of internalizing psychiatric disorders during late adolescence.…”

“…By contrast, our subjects had psychiatric complaints, a warning sign that prompted a detailed psychiatric evaluation. The liaison between psychological factors (e.g., personality traits, anxiety, and stress) and developmental speech-language disorders has been repeatedly mentioned in the literature ( Snowling et al, 2006 ; Dietrich et al, 2012 ; Gunn et al, 2014 ; Karukivi and Saarijärvi, 2014 ) and it involves a complex and multifaceted cross-talk. For example, a central question is whether psychological symptoms once established persist in individuals with developmental speech-language disorders or if they actually develop in latter phases as aftermaths of delayed communication ( Alm, 2014 ; Iverach and Rapee, 2014 ).…”

“…This might have resulted because altered white matter integrity around the venous angioma in subject 1 could have a different pathological substrate than in subject 2. Changes in diffusion parameters in both subjects may variously result from disrupted neural organization during development, maladaptive neural plasticity resulting from a cognitive and emotional bias toward negative emotions ( Koganemaru et al, 2012 ), or inhibition of emotional expression due to heightened reappraisal ( Giuliani et al, 2011 ) triggered by the negative and stressful consequences of having speech production deficits ( Dietrich et al, 2012 ).…”

Functional connectivity of PAG with core limbic system and laryngeal cortico-motor structures during human phonation

“…Furthermore, this pathway is responsible for maintaining the persistent increase in synaptic strength induced by anxiety following traumatic stress (Adamec, 1997). The PAG and the amygdala have been found to reliably co-activate in investigations of affect and emotion (Kober et al, 2008); thus, consideration of the integral role the amygdalo-PAG pathway plays in regulating behavioral and psychological manifestations of different emotions or affective states (Adamec, 1997;Graeff et al, 1993;Bandler & Shipley, 1994;Bandler & Carrive, 1988;Davis, 1998;Davis et al, 1996;Dietrich, Andreatta, Jiang, Joshi, & Stemple, 2012;Wattendorf et al, 2013;Wild, Rodden, Grodd, & Ruch, 2003) is important and supports the idea that the processing of positive or negative emotions or reacting to stressful situations can affect the PAG's ability to also mediate movement patterns during voicing. We speculate this may be due to the PAG's inefficiency in simultaneously regulating heightened states as well as coordinated movements necessary for human phonation.…”

Self-Ratings of Vocal Status in Daily Life: Reliability and Validity for Patients With Vocal Hyperfunction and a Normative Group

“…I t is believed that diagnoses related to vocal hyperfunction (VH; true vocal fold nodules, polyps, and muscle tension dysphonia) are caused by or associated with aberrant vocal behaviors in daily life (Hillman, Holmberg, Perkell, Walsh, & Vaughan, 1989). Typical daily variation in the vocal status of patients with hyperfunction-related voice disorders has been attributed to a number of factors including amount of voice use/recovery (Nanjundeswaran, Jacobson, Gartner-Schmidt, & Abbott, 2015;Solomon, 2008), levels of emotional stress (Dietrich, Andreatta, Jiang, Joshi, & Stemple, 2012;Dietrich, Verdolini Abbott, Gartner-Schmidt, & Rosen, 2008), and presence/absence of conditions that degrade vocal function (e.g., hydration, reflux; Chung et al, 2009). One-time, in-clinic surveys of patient self-reported vocal status support the assumption that patients with VH spend significantly more time in pathological vocal states such as higher levels of vocal fatigue, discomfort in the head/neck, and lower levels of functional voice use (Hogikyan & Sethuraman, 1999;Jacobson et al, 1997;Nanjundeswaran et al, 2015).…”