Affective sounds are an integral part of the natural and social environment that shape and
influence behavior across a multitude of species. In human primates, these affective sounds …

Any account of “what is special about the human brain”(Passingham 2008) must specify the
neural basis of our unique ability to produce speech and delineate how these remarkable …

Cognitive Neuroscience of Language provides an up-to-date, wide-ranging, and
pedagogically practical survey of the most important developments in this exciting field. It …

Abstract fMRI studies increasingly examine functions and properties of non-primary areas of
human auditory cortex. However there is currently no standardized localization procedure to …

This article suggests that methodological and conceptual advancements in affective
sciences militate in favor of adopting an appraisal-driven componential approach to further …

Our vocal tone—the prosody—contributes a lot to the meaning of speech beyond the actual
words. Indeed, the hesitant tone of a" yes" may be more telling than its affirmative lexical …

Subcortical brain structures of the limbic system, such as the amygdala, are thought to
decode the emotional value of sensory information. Recent neuroimaging studies, as well as …

Music is powerful in conveying emotions and triggering affective brain mechanisms.
Affective brain responses in previous studies were however rather inconsistent, potentially …

The processing of emotional nonlinguistic information in speech is defined as emotional
prosody. This auditory nonlinguistic information is essential in the decoding of social …

Is the singing voice processed distinctively in the human brain? In this Perspective, we
discuss what might distinguish song processing from speech processing in light of recent …