Emotional Prosody Processing in Epilepsy: Some Insights on Brain Reorganization

ALBA-FERRARA, LUCY; KOCHEN, SILVIA; HAUSMANN, MARKUS

FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE

FRONTIERS RES FOUND

Año: 2018 vol. 12

1662-5161

Drug resistant epilepsy is one of the most complex, multifactorial and polygenicneurological syndrome. Besides its dynamicity and variability, it still provides us with amodel to study brain-behavior relationship, giving cues on the anatomy and functionalrepresentation of brain function. Given that onset zone of focal epileptic seizures oftenaffects different anatomical areas, cortical but limited to one hemisphere, this conditionalso let us study the functional differences of the left and right cerebral hemispheres.One lateralized function in the human brain is emotional prosody, and it can be a usefulictal sign offering hints on the location of the epileptogenic zone. Besides its importancefor effective communication, prosody is not considered an eloquent domain, makingresective surgery on its neural correlates feasible. We performed an Electronicdatabases search (Medline and PsychINFO) from inception to July 2017 for studiesabout prosody in epilepsy. The search terms included ?epilepsy,? ?seizure,? ?emotionalprosody,? and ?vocal affect.? This review focus on emotional prosody processing inepilepsy as it can give hints regarding plastic functional changes following seizures(preoperatively), resection (post operatively), and also as an ictal sign enabling theassessment of dynamic brain networks. Moreover, it is argued that such reorganizationcan help to preserve the expression and reception of emotional prosody as a central skillto develop appropriate