Age-related differences in neural activation and functional connectivity during the processing of vocal prosody in adolescence

Abstract

The ability to recognize others' emotions based on vocal emotional prosody follows a protracted developmental trajectory during adolescence. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms supporting this maturation. The current study investigated age-related differences in neural activation during a vocal emotion recognition (ER) task. Listeners aged 8 to 19 years old completed the vocal ER task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. The task of categorizing vocal emotional prosody elicited activation primarily in temporal and frontal areas. Age was associated with a) greater activation in regions in the superior, middle, and inferior frontal gyri, b) greater functional connectivity between the left precentral and inferior frontal gyri and regions in the bilateral insula and temporo-parietal junction, and c) greater fractional anisotropy in the superior longitudinal fasciculus, which connects frontal areas to posterior temporo-parietal regions. Many of these age-related differences in brain activation and connectivity were associated with better performance on the ER task. Increased activation in, and connectivity between, areas typically involved in language processing and social cognition may facilitate the development of vocal ER skills in adolescence.

Longitudinal change in neural response to vocal emotion in adolescence

“…, 2005 ). An increase in dmPFC response to vocal emotion is broadly consistent with cross-sectional age-related changes in this sample that have been previously reported ( Morningstar et al. , 2019 ).…”

“…, 2009 , 2012 ). Previous work by our group noted age-related changes in the involvement of such social cognitive regions in a vocal ER task ( Morningstar et al. , 2019 ).…”

“…The current study builds on this work by examining youth’s behavioural and neural responses to vocal emotional prosody in a longitudinal framework. Youth aged 8 to 19 years (sample from Morningstar et al. , 2019 ) completed a vocal ER task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at two timepoints, 1 year apart.…”

“…Based on prior research on the neural mechanisms underlying social cognition and vocal ER ( Kilford et al. , 2016 ; Morningstar et al. , 2019 ), we hypothesized that developmental change in neural response to vocal emotion (whether over time and/or over age) would be most evident in neural regions involved in later stages of auditory emotion processing involved in interpretation (e.g.…”

Functional patterns of neural activation during vocal emotion recognition in youth with and without refractory epilepsy

“…Moreover, although this small magnitude interaction effect should be interpreted with caution until it is replicated in a larger sample, we found that group differences in vocal ER were particularly pronounced in younger participants. Struggling to identify the emotional intent of peer-aged speakers has been linked with poorer psychosocial outcomes in typically developing youth ( Maxim and Nowicki, 2003 , McClure and Nowicki, 2001 , Morningstar et al, 2019b , Nowicki and Carton, 1997 , Nowicki and Duke, 1992 , Rothman and Nowicki Jr., 2004 ); as such, this form of deficit may be contributing to social difficulties commonly experienced by children with epilepsy ( Camfield and Camfield, 2007 , Drewel and Caplan, 2007 , Sillanpää and Helen Cross, 2009 , Steiger and Jokeit, 2017 ). However, additional research will be needed to determine the functional consequences of vocal ER deficits in youth with epilepsy.…”