Resting-state connectivity reveals a role for sensorimotor systems in vocal emotional processing in children

Abstract

Voices are a primary source of emotional information in everyday interactions. Being able to process non-verbal vocal emotional cues, namely those embedded in speech prosody, impacts on our behavior and communication. Extant research has delineated the role of temporal and inferior frontal brain regions for vocal emotional processing. A growing number of studies also suggest the involvement of the motor system, but little is known about such potential involvement. Using resting-state fMRI, we ask if the patterns of motor system intrinsic connectivity play a role in emotional prosody recognition in children. Fifty-five 8-year-old children completed an emotional prosody recognition task and a resting-state scan. Better performance in emotion recognition was predicted by a stronger connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and motor regions including primary motor, lateral premotor and supplementary motor sites. This is mostly driven by the IFG pars triangularis and cannot be explained by differences in domain-general cognitive abilities. These findings indicate that individual differences in the engagement of sensorimotor systems, and in its coupling with inferior frontal regions, underpin variation in children's emotional speech perception skills. They suggest that sensorimotor and higher-order evaluative processes interact to aid emotion recognition, and have implications for models of vocal emotional communication.

Higher trait mindfulness is associated with empathy but not with emotion recognition abilities

“…This is comparable to previous studies on the correlates of individual differences in emotion recognition (e.g. [48][49][50]). Table 2 shows zero-order correlations between mindfulness and the remaining study variables.…”

Enhanced recognition of vocal emotions in individuals with naturally good musical abilities.

“…Such associations are often causally attributed to training (Schellenberg, 2019), however, and the current study shows that similar advantages can be In exploratory analyses, we found that participants reporting higher singing abilities were also better at recognizing emotions in speech prosody. This finding implies that other facets of musical expertise are involved in associations with vocal emotions, and is consistent with well-documented behavioral and neural links between production, imagery, and perceptual mechanisms in voice processing (Correia et al, 2019;Lima et al, 2015;Lima, Krishnan, & Scott, 2016;McGettigan et al, 2015;Pfordresher & Halpern, 2013;Warren et al, 2006). On the one hand, vocal production (such as singing) involves not only implementing movements but also planning and anticipating outcomes (which might rely on imagery), and using auditory feedback (perceptual processes) to detect and correct errors.…”

Associations Between Vocal Emotion Recognition and Socio-emotional Adjustment in Children

“…Each task included 60 trials, with 10 different stimuli for each of the six emotional categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutrality). The stimuli were part of previously validated corpora (speech prosody, Castro & Lima, 2010; nonverbal vocalisations, Lima et al, 2013a; facial expressions, Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces database, Goeleven et al, 2008) that have been frequently used (e.g., Agnoli et al, 2012; Correia et al, 2019, 2020; Lima & Castro, 2011; Lima et al, 2016; Lima et al, 2013b; Safar & Moulson, 2020). Speech prosody stimuli were short sentences ( M = 1473 ms, SD = 255) with emotionally neutral semantic content (e.g., “O quadro está na parede”, The painting is on the wall), produced by two female speakers to communicate emotions with prosodic cues alone.…”