ArticleBrain sciences2018
The Sound of Words Evokes Affective Brain Responses.
Article in Brain sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Meaningless, but not emotionless: Evidence from a megastudy of pseudoword lexical decisions.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- When the meaningless make sense: Wordlikeness and affective norms for 4,800 pseudowords and 1,200 Spanish words.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- The phoenix of phonaesthetics: the rise of an old-new research paradigm on the beauty of language sound.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Processing different types of iconicity in Chinese transferred epithet comprehension: An ERP study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Relationships Between Initial Consonants in Japanese Sound Symbolic Words and Familiarity, Multi-Sensory Imageability, Emotional Valence, and Arousal.Journal of psycholinguistic research · 2021Article
- Neuroimaging of valence decisions in children and adults.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2021Article
- Semantics Based on the Physical Characteristics of Facial Expressions Used to Produce Japanese Vowels.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Affective Arousal Links Sound to Meaning.Psychological science · 2020Article
- Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound-meaning integration in the left amygdala.Human brain mapping · 2019Article
- Near-infrared spectroscopy reveals neural perception of vocal emotions in human neonates.Human brain mapping · 2019Article
- Reading Shakespeare Sonnets: Combining Quantitative Narrative Analysis and Predictive Modeling -an Eye Tracking Study.Journal of eye movement research · 2019Article
- Preconceptual Spectral and Temporal Cues as a Source of Meaning in Speech and Music.Brain sciences · 2019Review
- Affective Congruence between Sound and Meaning of Words Facilitates Semantic Decision.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- Semantic Features Reveal Different Networks During Word Processing: An EEG Source Localization Study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The long history of poetry and the arts, as well as recent empirical results suggest that the way a word sounds (e.g., soft vs. harsh) can convey affective information related to emotional responses (e.g., pleasantness vs. harshness). However, the neural correlates of the affective potential of the sound of words remain unknown. In an fMRI study involving passive listening, we focused on the affective dimension of arousal and presented words organized in two discrete groups of sublexical (i.e., sound) arousal (high vs. low), while controlling for lexical (i.e., semantic) arousal. Words sounding high arousing, compared to their low arousing counterparts, resulted in an enhanced BOLD signal in bilateral posterior insula, the right auditory and premotor cortex, and the right supramarginal gyrus. This finding provides first evidence on the neural correlates of affectivity in the sound of words. Given the similarity of this neural network to that of nonverbal emotional expressions and affective prosody, our results support a unifying view that suggests a core neural network underlying any type of affective sound processing.
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