title: Cortical activation during auditory elicitation of fear and disgust: a near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) study.
abstract: This near infrared spectroscopy study investigated whether nonverbal human sounds representing different basic emotions are able to specifically modulate temporo-parietal cortices, involved in auditory processing and attention. Forty-three adults (19 females and 24 males) were presented with sounds from the categories fear, disgust, and neutral. The stimuli were able to elicit the target emotions with sufficient specificity. The listening to fear-relevant sounds (e.g., screams of fear and pain) led to increased activation of the right superior temporal gyrus and the bilateral supramarginal gyrus. The hemodynamic responses to disgusting sounds (e.g., sniffing, diarrhea) were smaller. Our findings point to a differential neuronal sensitivity of the human brain to two basic emotion elicitors in the auditory domain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Graz, Austria. Angelika.koechel@uni-graz.at
authors.forename: Angelika
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Köchel
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schöngassner
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schienle
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019265:Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared
keywords: Disgust; Emotional sounds; Fear; NIRS