Discrimination of fearful and angry emotional voices in sleeping human neonates: a study of the mismatch brain responses.

ABSTRACT: Appropriate processing of human voices with different threat-related emotions is of evolutionarily adaptive value for the survival of individuals. Nevertheless, it is still not clear whether the sensitivity to threat-related information is present at birth. Using an odd-ball paradigm, the current study investigated the neural correlates underlying automatic processing of emotional voices of fear and anger in sleeping neonates. Event-related potential data showed that the fronto-central scalp distribution of the neonatal brain could discriminate fearful voices from angry voices; the mismatch response (MMR) was larger in response to the deviant stimuli of anger, compared with the standard stimuli of fear. Furthermore, this fear-anger MMR discrimination was observed only when neonates were in

SUBMITTER: Zhang D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4255595 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature