The neural representation of vocal emotion: representational similarity analysis and information-theoretic approaches

识别和解释他人的情绪对于社交互动至关重要。特别是，所有文化的人都能够在没有语言的情况下识别声音中的情感，如笑声，哭泣或恐惧的尖叫声。但是，我们的大脑如何分析声音中的情绪仍然知之甚少，例如，与我们如何感知面部表情相比，在这个项目中，我们召集了几位专家共同研究者和外部合作者，以解决两个关于我们的大脑如何处理声音中的情绪信息的新的未回答的问题。我们将使用几种互补的神经成像技术以目前可能的最佳精度测量大脑活动，并使用先进的分析技术提出两个主要系列的问题：（1）大脑是否将情绪处理为不同的类别（例如，恐惧，愤怒，快乐），或者更确切地说，作为一个连续的情绪，每个情绪的特征是不同的激活量（唤醒）或表达的消极/积极程度（效价）？(2)负责分析声音中情绪的大脑区域振荡网络的不同节点是如何相互作用的？它们是否以协同方式在节点之间共享信息，或者不同节点之间是否存在冗余？如果是的话，那么情感信息是如何、在哪里、何时结合在一起的，从而达到对特定情感的识别？该项目的结果将带来关于正常大脑如何工作的重要新知识，对沟通障碍的治疗和诊断以及开发更好的神经假体（如耳蜗植入物）产生长期影响。该项目还将有助于巩固和保持英国在先进神经科学研究方面的领先地位。

Recognizing and interpreting emotions in other persons is crucial for social interactions. In particular, people of all cultures are able to recognize emotions in vocalizations without speech such as laughs, cries or screams of fear. But how our brain analyses emotion in voices remains poorly understood, compared to how we perceive emotion in faces, for example.In this project we bring together several expert co-investigators and external collaborators to address two new streams of unanswered questions on the way our brain processes emotional information in voice. We will use several complementary neuroimaging techniques to measure cerebral activity with the best precision currently possible, and advanced analysis techniques to ask two main series of questions:(1) Does the brain processes emotions as different categories (e.g., fear, anger, pleasure) or rather as a continuum emotions each characterized by different amount of activation (arousal) or how negative/positive the expression is (valence)?(2) How do different nodes of the oscillatory network of brain regions responsible for analysing emotion in voice interact with one another? Do they share information between nodes in a synergistic way, or is there redundancy between the different nodes? And if yes, how, where and when is emotional information combined to arrive at the recognition of a specific emotion?The results from this project will bring important new knowledge on how the normal brain works, with longer-term impact on the treatment and diagnosis of communication disorders and the development of better neural prostheses such as cochlear implants. The project will also contribute to consolidating and preserving UK's leading position in advanced neuroscience research.