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Abstract:
Lesion studies and functional imaging experiments have
equivocally localized cerebral areas as prerequisites for
perceptual and expressive language functions (Posner & Raichle,
1995). However, no consensus has been achieved in localizing the
processing of prosodic features subserving affective, pragmatic and
diverse linguistic impressions in the right or left hemisphere
(Baum & Pell, 2000). In a preceding study, inner speech during
affective speech processing resulted in bilateral activation with
left-frontal preponderance. It was suggested that neural networks
in the left frontal lobe provide information on motor aspects of
suprasegmental signal characteristics and contribute to the
evaluation of affective speech (Pihan et al., 2000). The present
study focuses on the neurophysiological interface of linguistic and
affective prosody processing. It investigates the effects of
linguistic prosodic versus affective prosodic task demands on the
topography of cortical activation while processing defined acoustic
parameters that carry both, linguistic and affective prosodic
information. Subjects discriminate pairs of declarative sentences
with neutral, happy or fearful intonation. Both utterances differ
acoustically exclusively in the course of fundamental frequency
(downward or upward) and in sentence final duration of voiced
segments indicating either statements/questions in a linguistic
rating or increasing/decreasing emotionality on affective
discrimination. Direct current potentials are recorded from the
scalp during stimulus discrimination. The latest behavioural and
electrophysiological results will be presented.
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