This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Communicating effectively with others involves recognizing emotions from faces and voices. How does the brain process and integrate emotional information from what others show and say?
In a new study in JNeurosci, Olivier Collignon, from the Catholic University of Louvain, Stefania Mattioni, currently at Ghent University, and colleagues mapped responses in people's brains to faces and voices expressing different emotions. When participants perceived faces or voices separately, the emotions expressed triggered a wide range of brain activity in areas that respond to faces and voices. Mattioni elaborates, "Importantly, these areas were not limited to their preferred sense: Several face-selective regions also carried information about emotions heard in voices, while voice-selective regions carried information about emotions seen in faces.
In some regions, the brain even represented the same emotion similarly whether it was seen or heard." When study participants observed faces and voices together, this combination reshaped how the brain processed and evaluated emotions compared with faces or voices alone. According to the researchers, this work suggests that the brain systems that process faces and voices interact and, in some areas, represent emotions in a similar way. This observation may help people quickly build an understanding of how a person is feeling by looking at their facial expressions and hearing the tone of their voice.
The findings from this study could inform future research on whether these mechanisms are impaired in individuals who struggle to integrate social cues. Representation of Emotional Expressions Across the Face and Voice Brain Networks, JNeurosci (2026). DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0366-26.2026 Journal information: Journal of Neuroscience Swati Mestri holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering and has worked as a content editor since 2019.
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