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bioRxiv · 10.64898/2025.12.12.693781

A distinct set of brain areas process prosody--the melody of speech

Regev, T. I.·Kim, H. S.·Jhingan, N.·Swords, S.·Kean, H.·Casto, C.·Cole, J. S.·Fedorenko, E.
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Abstract

Human speech carries information beyond the words themselves: pitch, loudness, duration, and pauses--jointly referred to as prosody--emphasize critical words, help group words into phrases, and convey emotional and other socially-relevant information. Using a novel fMRI paradigm, we identify a set of prosody-responsive brain areas and then richly characterize them across 8 experiments (25 experimental conditions; n=51 participants). These areas--located on the lateral temporal surface bilaterally and in the frontal lobe--respond to the presence of prosody in both meaningful and meaningless speech, and are distinct from nearby temporal pitch- and speech-perception areas and from frontal areas sensitive to general cognitive and attentional demands. They are also dissociable from--but show partial overlap with--the language areas and with the area that processes dynamic facial expressions. Thus, prosodic information is processed by a distinct set of brain areas, which may help integrate linguistic meanings with non-verbal communicative signals.

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Regev, T. I., Kim, H. S., Jhingan, N., Swords, S., Kean, H., Casto, C., Cole, J. S., Fedorenko, E.. 2025-12-14. A distinct set of brain areas process prosody--the melody of speech. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.12.693781

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