Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Speech processing is the core function of language cognition, and the brain mechanism of speech processing are an important topic in linguistics and cognitive psychology. However, it is unclear that how the newborn's brain perceives speech. The purpose of this review is to investigate the brain mechanism of speech perception in newborns. We found that human beings have a relatively well-developed speech processing mechanism during the neonatal period. While the left frontal lobe (especially the inferior frontal gyrus) plays an important role in detecting speech structure, the bilateral temporal lobes are responsible for detecting speech deviation. In addition, the left hemisphere has an advantage in mother tongue perception.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2018-11-19
Abstract： Our ability to process emotional prosody, that is the emotional tone of a speaker, is fundamental to human communication and adaptive behaviours. Very early in development, vocal emotional cues are more critical than facial expressions in guiding infants' behavior. However, the processing of emotional prosody in the very early days of life is still far from clearly understood. It is unclear whether the discrimination between prosodies with different emotional categories is present at birth. Furthermore, it is unknown whether there is a preferential orientation (negativity bias versus positivity preference) in neonates. Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the ability of neonates (from 1 to 6 days old) to discriminate different types of emotions conveyed by speech prosody. The experiment was conducted in the neonatal ward of Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China. Electroencephalogram recording was carried out when the infants were in a state of active sleep. Using an oddball paradigm, the current study investigated the neural correlates underlying automatic processing of emotional voices of happiness, fear and anger in 18 (Experiment 1) and 29 (Experiment 2) sleeping neonates. In Experiment 1, each category of emotional prosody (20%) was separately mixed into emotionally neutral prosody (80%), forming three blocks with different emotions. In Experiment 2, we not only repeated the procedure of Experiment 1, but also reversed the standard and deviation stimuli in the odd-ball task. Event-related potential data showed that the frontal scalp distribution (F3 and F4) of the neonatal brain could discriminate happy voices from both angry and fearful voices; the mismatch response (MMR) was larger in response to the deviant stimuli of happiness, compared with the deviant stimuli of anger and fear. However, the latter two stimuli, i.e., angry and fearful voices could not be differentiated. The MMR amplitudes at the other four electrodes, i.e., C3, C4, P3, and P4 did not show significant differences across emotional conditions. Note: the MMR is a prototype of the mismatch negativity, i.e. a preattentive component of the auditory ERP that shows a positive (MMR) or negative (MMN) displacement in response to deviant sounds compared to standard sounds in the oddball paradigm. The neural responses recorded here indicate very early preference for positive over negative stimuli, which is contrary to the ‘negativity bias’ phenomenon established in the affective prosody literature of adult and infant studies. It is suggest that the range-frequency hypothesis could help to interpret the transformation from the ‘positivity preference’ during the first half year of life to the ‘negativity bias’ later in development. The present finding provides the first neuroelectrophysiological evidence for the hypothesis of positivity preference in neonatal participants. In addition, this special discrimination between positive and negative prosody in early life may provide a foundation for later emotion and social cognition development. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2018-10-26 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract：已有的经颅直流电刺激(transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS)研究证明, 右腹外侧前额叶(right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, RVLPFC)是社会情绪调节的重要脑区, 激活RVLPFC可显著降低人们对社会性负性情绪体验的强度。社会功能受损是抑郁症患者或抑郁倾向人群的重要特征之一。该群体对社会排斥的敏感性高, 且对负性社会情绪体验的情绪调节能力降低。在本研究中, 我们采用外显的情绪调节任务, 研究了高、低抑郁水平的两组成年人被试在RVLPFC接受阳性tDCS后其情绪调节能力的改变。结果表明, 虽然采用tDCS激活RVLPFC可帮助被试通过情绪调节(认知重评)减弱负性情绪体验, 但高抑郁水平被试的负性情绪强度下降程度明显小于低抑郁水平被试。另外本文还发现, 与源于个人的负性情绪相比, tDCS效应对源于社会的负性情绪(即社会排斥)更强。本研究是采用电或磁刺激提高抑郁人群社会情绪调节能力的首次尝试。实验结果表明, 高抑郁水平成年人的RVLPFC仅通过单次、短时间(34 min)的tDCS激活, 其情绪调节能力并未得到显著提升。这提示对抑郁倾向群体或抑郁症患者的干预或治疗需要多次施加tDCS。
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