Robert Zatorre
Research project
Emotion communication in speech and music: Role of spectrotemporal modulations
Project summary
The project will focus on the role of spectrotemporal modulations in carrying information that conveys emotion in both speech and music contexts. We will use a previously developed method to filter speech and musical sounds, and selectively modify their spectral or temporal features; behavioral measures will test the hypothesis that emotion-relevant acoustical cues may depend more on one or the other dimension, and that this may interact with the whether the sound is speech or music. In a second phase we will adapt the task to a neuroimaging context, using both functional MRI and Magnetoencephalography, allowing us to test the relationship between neural measures and behavioral responses, which we believe forms the basis for emotion processing in the two domains. The proposed studies will allow us to gain a better understanding of human communication of emotion as conveyed via speech and music, and we hope will lead to longer-term collaborations between the teams in Marseille and Montreal.
