Emotional speech synchronizes brains across listeners and engages large-scale dynamic brain networks.

ABSTRACT: Speech provides a powerful means for sharing emotions. Here we implement novel intersubject phase synchronization and whole-brain dynamic connectivity measures to show that networks of brain areas become synchronized across participants who are listening to emotional episodes in spoken narratives. Twenty participants' hemodynamic brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they listened to 45-s narratives describing unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant events spoken in neutral voice. After scanning, participants listened to the narratives again and rated continuously their feelings of pleasantness-unpleasantness (valence) and of arousal-calmness. Instantaneous intersubject phase synchronization (ISPS) measures were computed to derive both multi-subject

SUBMITTER: Nummenmaa L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4229500 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature