Neural correlates of embodied and vibratory mechanisms associated with emotional prosody production

Abstract

Despite a large body of literature on the psychological and brain mechanisms of vocal emotion perception, less is known about expression and production mechanisms, especially the vibrations originating in the vocal cords and their role in emotional voice production. In the present study, we aimed to fill this gap. Participants were asked to produce angry, happy, and neutral tone emotional vocalizations in different production conditions (‘normal,’ ‘whisper,’ and ‘silent articulation’). An accelerometer recorded the vibrations on the throat, close to the vocal folds. The results highlight the crucial role of vocal tract vibrations in multisensory integration during emotional prosody production. Crucially, Production and its interaction with Emotion revealed significant effects in motor, somatosensory, insular, and inferior frontal cortices. Results also showed effects of the emotion with activations in the bilateral temporal voice areas, the inferior frontal gyri, as well as motor and supplementary motor areas. Exploratory analysis revealed that emotional vocal tract vibrations correlate with activations in multisensory integration regions (insula, inferior frontal cortex, and cerebellum). We propose that vocal tract vibrations could implicitly affect bodily self-consciousness and, therefore, the representation of one’s own emotions related to emotional vocal production.