Brain organization of prosody

Abstract

In Neuroscience, the study of the cerebral organization of prosody has focused on the distinction between emotional prosody, associated with conveying emotional states, and linguistic prosody, associated with communicating different linguistic distinctions. With the objective of exploring whether or not there is empirical evidence supporting the notion of differences in the cerebral organization between both types of prosody, this paper reports the key findings regarding differences in the functional organization of emotional and linguistic prosody. Alternative approaches for explaining the functional organization of prosody are described, followed by a discussion of the conceptual and empirical limitations, as well as the areas of opportunity for further research in this field.