- ALLERGY, RESPIRATORY
- Keep Asthma, Allergies at Bay for the Holidays
- Food Allergies Stir a Mother to Action
- 'Safe' Ozone Levels May Not Be for Some
- ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
- Fish Oil's Benefits Remain Elusive
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- Garlic Yields Up Its Health Secret
- ANIMAL CARE
- Beware of Dog Bites
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- Babies Born in High Pollen Months at Wheezing Risk
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- Grapefruit-Heavy Diet Helped Spur Dangerous Clot
- Years of Exposure to Traffic Pollution Raises Blood Pressure
- Firefighters Have Narrower-Than-Normal Arteries, Study Finds
- COSMETIC
- What to Do If You Have Unsightly Veins
- Science May Banish Bad Hair Days
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- Probiotics Are The Good Guys
- Eat Light - Live Longer
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- Preparing for a Chlorine Gas Disaster
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- EYE CARE, VISION
- Health Tip: If Your Child Wears Glasses
- Vision Test for Young Children Called Unreliable
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- FITNESS
- Exercise Key Player in Knee Replacement Recovery
- Many Cancer Survivors Don't Adopt Healthy Lifestyle
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- GASTROINTESTINAL PROBLEMS
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- Japanese Herbals May Ease Gastro Woes
- Soothing Imagery May Help Rid Some Kids of Stomach Pain
- GENERAL HEALTH
- Sun, Smoke, Extra Weight Add Years to Skin
- Vinegar Might Help Keep Off Pounds
- Simple Holistic Approach to Fight the Common Cold
- HEAD & NECK
- Ski Helmets Encouraged for All
- Zen May Thicken Brain, Thwart Pain
- Many Children Will Outgrow Headaches
- HEALTH & TECHNOLOGY
- Airport Full Body Scanners Pose No Health Threat: Experts
- E-Mailing Your Way to Healthier Habits
- Using Light Therapy to Silence Harmful Brain Activity
- HEART & CARDIOVASCULAR
- Relaxation Tapes or Mozart Lower Blood Pressure
- Walk Long, Slow and Often to Help the Heart
- Review Confirms Links Between Diet, Heart Health
- INFECTIOUS DISEASE
- Bacterial Infections May Succumb to Honey
- Surgical Masks Could Prevent Flu, Maybe
- Swine Flu Is Now a Pandemic Says W.H.O.
- KID'S HEALTH
- Wood Fires Can Harm the Youngest Lungs
- Stomach Germ May Protect Against Asthma
- Daily Exercise at School Yields Rewards
- MEN'S HEALTH
- Countdown to Hair Loss
- Sunlight May Help Protect Men From Kidney Cancer
- Low Iron Levels Cut Cancer Risk in Men With PAD
- MENTAL HEALTH
- Musicians' Brains Tuned to Emotions in Sound
- Estrogen May Help Men's Hearts
- Heal Your Life® Tips for Living Well
- PREGNANCY
- Sugary Colas Tied to Gestational Diabetes
- Acupuncture May Ease Depression During Pregnancy
- Before Conceiving, Take Folic Acid for One Full Year
- SENIORS
- Video Gaming Just Might Fight Aging
- 15-Point Test Gauges Alzheimer's Risk
- Save Your Aging Brain, Try Surfing The Web
Brain Scans Show How Humans 'Hear' Emotion
By eHolistic.com Published: 05/14/2009
By Randy Dotinga
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) -- What's in a word? Emotion, especially if it's said with inflection.
Now, Swiss scientists report that they can detect a person's sense of the emotion behind a word by "reading" the brain as it processes sounds from the world around it.
The findings could lead to better understanding of mental illnesses that affect how people interpret the emotions of others, such as autism and schizophrenia, said study co-author Patrik Vuilleumier, a researcher at University Hospital of Geneva.
The researchers scanned the brains of 22 subjects -- 13 women, nine men -- as they listened to the voices of actors saying a "pseudosentence," which is a sentence of words that sound real but are actually made up.
The actors spoke the words in five ways -- with sadness, anger, joy, relief or a neutral tone. Using functional MRIs, the researchers tried to see if they could determine what emotion the subjects heard by looking at the reactions of their brains.
The findings appear in the May 14 online issue of Current Biology.
The researchers discovered that each emotion left a different "signature" in the part of the brain that handles the processing of sound.
"This should give insights into the way emotions are coded in the brain, but also tools to assess how different people experience events in different conditions," Vuilleumier said.
The research suggests that the brain considers emotion early on, as it processes sound, said Duke University neuroscientist Scott Huettel, who's familiar with the findings.
It's not clear whether the brain works the same way when it tries to understand emotion in written words, such as those in e-mails or text messages. "For the vast majority of people [in history], emotion as conveyed in written words is pretty modern," Huettel said. "You can think of how recently literacy has taken hold."
In the future, research like this could help scientists get a better handle on psychiatric disorders that affect how people perceive the world around them, Huettel said.
Autistics, for instance, "don't have a good sense of what other people are thinking, doing or feeling," he said. This research, he said, could allow scientists to better understand exactly what goes wrong in their brains.
The knowledge may not lead directly to a treatment, he said, but could provide "a way to think about a disorder."
More information
Learn more about emotions from thinkquest.org.
SOURCES: Patrik Vuilleumier, researcher, University Hospital, Geneva; Scott Huettel, Ph.D., associate professor, psychiatry and neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; May 14, 2009, Current Biology, online
Last Updated: May 14, 2009
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