Research has long supported a pivotal right hemisphere contribution to the decoding of emotional prosody, although a broader network of cortical and subcortical structures is now thought to support different components of this functional system during input processing. This paper highlights important work implicating the basal ganglia in emotional prosody decoding, especially in reinforcing key affective stimulus properties necessary for higher-order interpretative processes. The role of the right hemisphere in elaborating emotional-prosodic stimuli is then considered in reference to presumed ‘functional’ and ‘auditory-perceptual’ capacities of constituent regions. A broader description of the right hemisphere’s jurisdiction in social-emotive behaviour is advocated to advance future work in this area, and a new paradigm to tap on-line comprehension of emotional prosody in clinical populations is described.
Cite as: Pell, M.D. (2002) Surveying emotional prosody in the brain. Proc. Speech Prosody 2002, 77-82
@inproceedings{pell02_speechprosody,
author={Marc D. Pell},
title={{Surveying emotional prosody in the brain}},
year=2002,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2002},
pages={77--82}
}