Language comprehension influenced by emotional context: an MEG study

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Language comprehension influenced by emotional context: an MEG study Aya Ihara1*, Qiang Wei1, Ayumu Matani2, Norio FujiMaki1, Haruko Yagura1, Takeshi Nogai1 and Tsutomu Murata1 1 National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan 2 University of Tokyo , Japan To clarify the neural basis of language comprehension dependent on emotional context, we performed MEG experiments using a cross-modal priming paradigm with an auditorily presented prime and a visually presented target. The primes were the names of people, e.g., “Aoki-san” (English translation: “Mr./Ms. Aoki”), which were spoken with happy, neutral, or sad prosody. The targets were interrogative one-word sentences that consisted of a verb, e.g., “hashiru?” (English translation: “run?”), with emotionally neutral content or a pseudo-verb, e.g., “kazebu?” (pronounceable but not comprehensible). Subjects (n =10) were instructed to read the target sentences silently as the sequel of the prime voices, and to judge whether the targets included a verb or pseudo-verb. We measured the neural activities during silent reading of the targets presented in an emotional context (i.e., Happy, Neutral, or Sad condition) by using MEG. Two conditional differences dependent on the emotional context were found: the Happy and Sad conditions produced less activity than the Neutral condition in the right posterior inferior and middle frontal cortices from 300 to 450 ms; the Happy and Neutral conditions produced greater activity than the Sad condition in the left posterior inferior frontal cortex from 350 to 500 ms, and in the left anterior medial temporal lobe from 400 to 500 ms. These results suggest that the use of emotional context stored in the right frontal cortex starts at approximately 300 ms, that integration of the linguistic information with the emotional context starts at approximately 350 ms in the left frontotemporal cortex, and that language comprehension dependent on the emotional context is achieved by approximately 500 ms. Conference: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism , Dubrovnik, Croatia, 28 Mar - 1 Apr, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Language Citation: Ihara A, Wei Q, Matani A, FujiMaki N, Yagura H, Nogai T and Murata T (2010). Language comprehension influenced by emotional context: an MEG study. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Biomag 2010 - 17th International Conference on Biomagnetism . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.06.00257 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 01 Apr 2010; Published Online: 01 Apr 2010. * Correspondence: Aya Ihara, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Kobe, Japan, ihara@po.nict.go.jp Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Aya Ihara Qiang Wei Ayumu Matani Norio FujiMaki Haruko Yagura Takeshi Nogai Tsutomu Murata Google Aya Ihara Qiang Wei Ayumu Matani Norio FujiMaki Haruko Yagura Takeshi Nogai Tsutomu Murata Google Scholar Aya Ihara Qiang Wei Ayumu Matani Norio FujiMaki Haruko Yagura Takeshi Nogai Tsutomu Murata PubMed Aya Ihara Qiang Wei Ayumu Matani Norio FujiMaki Haruko Yagura Takeshi Nogai Tsutomu Murata Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.