Abstract
The long history of poetry and the arts, as well as recent empirical results suggest that the way a word sounds (e.g., soft vs. harsh) can convey affective information related to emotional responses (e.g., pleasantness vs. harshness). However, the neural correlates of the affective potential of the sound of words remain unknown. In an fMRI study involving passive listening, we focused on the affective dimension of arousal and presented words organized in two discrete groups of sublexical (i.e., sound) arousal (high vs. low), while controlling for lexical (i.e., semantic) arousal. Words sounding high arousing, compared to their low arousing counterparts, resulted in an enhanced BOLD signal in bilateral posterior insula, the right auditory and premotor cortex, and the right supramarginal gyrus. This finding provides first evidence on the neural correlates of affectivity in the sound of words. Given the similarity of this neural network to that of nonverbal emotional expressions and affective prosody, our results support a unifying view that suggests a core neural network underlying any type of affective sound processing.
Highlights
When communicating, humans usually express emotion through two different signaling systems: verbal vocalization, i.e., relating the semantic content of particular phoneme combinations, and nonverbal vocalization, i.e., relating paralinguistic cues such as intonation or rhythm
Results supported a performance above chance for recognizing OLD words, with a significantly higher score average (M = 3.53) compared to new words (NEW) words (M = 2.54): t = −20.6, p < 0.0001
The comparison between all words contrasted with the baseline condition of the signal-correlated noise (SCN) revealed left-lateralized activations in core language areas, i.e., the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), middle and superior temporal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobule (BA 40), suggesting that this experiment successfully tapped into the language processing system
Summary
Humans usually express emotion through two different signaling systems: verbal vocalization, i.e., relating the semantic content of particular phoneme combinations (words), and nonverbal vocalization, i.e., relating paralinguistic cues such as intonation or rhythm. The long history of poetry, as the most ancient record of human literature, as well as recent empirical results suggest a possible connection between phonemes and another layer of affective meaning beyond the conventional links [2,3,4,5,6]. Stylistic devices such as euphony or cacophony are instructive examples indicating how the sound of a word can evoke a feeling of pleasantness or harshness, respectively. This idea has been supported by recent experimental evidence highlighting the role of sound in affective meaning making [8], as well as its contribution to the beauty of words [9]
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