ON THE ROLE OF VOCAL EMOTIONS FOR VERBAL MEMORY: AN INVESTIGATION OF NEURAL AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL MECHANISMS

Abstract

The present study explored the neural and psychophysiological substrates underlying the influence of vocal emotions on verbal memory. Heart rate and fMRI data were acquired while participants performed a verbal memory task comprising an encoding phase (memorizing words) and a test phase (memory recognition). During encoding, attending to sad as compared to neutral prosody elicited greater heart rate (HR) deceleration and greater activity in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus and right transverse temporal gyrus. At test, words previously heard with a sad prosody were remembered less accurately and rated more negatively than their neutral counterparts. A greater HR acceleration to words with sad as compared to neutral prosody was associated with a reduced memory deficit for sadly as compared to neutrally spoken words. This may be mediated by the relationship between sympathetic arousal and memory. Implications of current findings are discussed in relation to vocal communication and verbal memory.