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Abstract:
The current fMRI experiment attempted to differentiate brain
activation related to affective prosody.This was realized by
comparing lexicalized and de-lexicalized (low-pass
filtered)sentences with positive, neutral and negative affective
prosody.Twelve subjects judged the prosodic contour of a sentence
on a five-point scale during the fMRI scan. Condition effects:While
bilateral(left accentuated) activation was found in the temporal
and subcortical regions in the lexicalized condition, there was
bilateral inferior frontal and prefrontal activation in the
de-lexicalized condition.Prosody effects:In the lexicalized
condition the contrast between neutral and negative prosody
resulted in differential activation of the middle insula, while the
contrast between neutral and positive prosody showed activity in BA
44,45(bilaterally) and the right posterior STS.In the
de-lexicalized condition the contrast between neutral and negative
prosody resulted in differential bilateral activation of BA 46,BA
44/45(right)and the left planum polare, while the contrast between
neutral and positive prosody showed enhanced activation in BA 44,45
(left) and the supratemporal plane.Thus,lateralized brain
activation related to affective prosody varies as a function of
condition (lexicalized vs. de-lexicalized) and affect (negative vs.
positive).
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