title: Cerebral processing of prosodic emotional signals: evaluation of a network model using rTMS.
abstract: A great number of functional imaging studies contributed to developing a cerebral network model illustrating the processing of prosody in the brain. According to this model, the processing of prosodic emotional signals is divided into three main steps, each related to different brain areas. The present study sought to evaluate parts of the aforementioned model by using low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over two important brain regions identified by the model: the superior temporal cortex (Experiment 1) and the inferior frontal cortex (Experiment 2). The aim of both experiments was to reduce cortical activity in the respective brain areas and evaluate whether these reductions lead to measurable behavioral effects during prosody processing. However, results obtained in this study revealed no rTMS effects on the acquired behavioral data. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in the paper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany; Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Heike
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jacob
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Carolin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Brück
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Plewnia
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wildgruber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation; D055815:Young Adult