title: The Voice of Anger: Oscillatory EEG Responses to Emotional Prosody.
abstract: Emotionally relevant stimuli and in particular anger are, due to their evolutionary relevance, often processed automatically and able to modulate attention independent of conscious access. Here, we tested whether attention allocation is enhanced when auditory stimuli are uttered by an angry voice. We recorded EEG and presented healthy individuals with a passive condition where unfamiliar names as well as the subject's own name were spoken both with an angry and neutral prosody. The active condition instead, required participants to actively count one of the presented (angry) names. Results revealed that in the passive condition the angry prosody only elicited slightly stronger delta synchronization as compared to a neutral voice. In the active condition the attended (angry) target was related to enhanced delta/theta synchronization as well as alpha desynchronization suggesting enhanced allocation of attention and utilization of working memory resources. Altogether, the current results are in line with previous findings and highlight that attention orientation can be systematically related to specific oscillatory brain responses. Potential applications include assessment of non-communicative clinical groups such as post-comatose patients.
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Renata
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Del Giudice
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Blume
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Malgorzata
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wislowska
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wielek
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Dominik P J
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Heib
authors.affiliation: University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Sleep, Cognition and Consciousness Research, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.|Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience Salzburg (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunner Strasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schabus
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult