Neuro-cognitive studies of vocal emotion processing in speech

社会神经科学领域正在迅速发展，最近人们对人类如何交流情绪和对情绪刺激做出反应的兴趣激增。在这个研究项目中，我们研究了一个在某种程度上被忽视的话题--说话时如何从人的声音中表达和理解情感，以及大脑中潜在的心理功能是如何构建的。为了识别情绪的声音表达(例如，愤怒、喜悦)，听者必须处理语音中的声学波动，如音调、响度和节奏，这些波动随着时间的推移以具有情感意义的方式区分开来。声音中的情绪表达是随着时间的推移而表现出来的，这一事实提出了一个关键的经验主义问题：当我们听到说话者的声音时，我们能多快地察觉到情绪？又涉及到哪些神经结构呢？理解语音中识别情感意义的准确时间进程将是描述人类声音交流能力的基础，也是大脑中这一系统的基础。我们要解决的另一个重要问题是：当听者识别情绪的声音表达时，这些信息是否以系统的方式引导他们的视觉注意力和/或对视觉刺激(例如，面部表情)的判断？回答这个问题将告诉我们许多关于自然社会互动的信息，在自然社会互动中，人类通常必须以具有社会意义和适应性的方式将情绪线索整合到不止一种感觉通道中。我们的研究将涉及年轻、健康的成年人，我们的问题将从不同的角度进行测试，使用认知神经科学(行为方法、眼球跟踪、电生理学和神经成像)前沿的补充方法。我们的研究将带来一个更复杂的神经认知机制模型，这种机制支持通过声音进行情感交流，从更广泛的角度来看，它将揭示人类独特的能力，即使用复杂的听觉信号来传达语言和情感意义。我们的结果将激发辩论并激发新的想法，这些想法将极大地提高人们对人类如何进行社会互动以及交流他们的情感和意图的了解。

The field of "social neuroscience" is developing rapidly, and there is a recent surge of interest in how humans communicate their emotions and respond to emotional stimuli. In this research program, we investigate a topic that has been somewhat neglected-how emotions are expressed and understood from the human voice while speaking, and how underlying mental functions are structured in the brain. To recognize vocal expressions of emotion (e.g., anger, joy), listeners must process acoustic fluctuations in speech, such as pitch, loudness, and rhythm, which differentiate over time in emotionally meaningful ways. The fact that emotional expressions in the voice are represented across time raises a critical empirical question: how quickly do we detect emotions when listening to a speaker's voice? And what neural structures are involved? Understanding the precise time course for recognizing emotional meanings in speech will be fundamental for describing the human capacity for acoustic communication and the basis of this system in the brain. Another important question that we will address is: when listeners recognize vocal expressions of emotion, does this information guide their visual attention and/or judgements of visual stimuli (e.g., facial expressions) in systematic ways? Answering this question will tell us much about natural social interactions, where humans must typically integrate emotional cues in more than one sensory modality in socially meaningful and adaptive ways. Our studies will involve young, healthy adults and our questions will be tested from different vantage points, using complementary methods at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience (behavioural approaches, eye-tracking, electrophysiology, and neuroimaging). Our research will lead to a more sophisticated model of the neuro-cognitive mechanisms that support emotional communication through the voice, and in broader terms, it will shed light on the uniquely human capacity to communicate both linguistic and emotional meanings using complex auditory signals. Our results will energize debate and spark new ideas that will significantly advance knowledge of how humans interact socially and communicate their emotions and intentions.