The Evolution of Emotional Communication From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in Man

by Altenmuller, Eckart; Schmidt, Sabine; Zimmermann, Elke

• ISBN13: 9780199583560
• ISBN10: 0199583560
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780191506246
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Why do we think that we can understand animal voices - such as the aggressive barking of a pet dog, and the longing meows of the family cat? Why do we think of deep voices as dominant and high voices as submissive. Are there universal principles governing our own communication system? Can we even see how close animals are related to us by constructing an evolutionary tree based on similarities and dissimilarities in acoustic signaling? Research on the role of emotions in acoustic communication and its evolution has often been neglected, despite its obvious role in our daily life. When we infect others with our laugh, soothe a crying baby with a lullaby, or get goose bumps listening to classical music, we are barely aware of the complex processes upon which this behavior is based. It is not facial expressions or body language that are affecting us, but sound. They are present in music and speech as "emotional prosody" and allow us to communicate not only verbally but also emotionally. This groundbreaking book presents a thorough exploration into how acoustically conveyed emotions are generated and processed in both animals and man. It is the first volume to bridge the gap between research in the acoustic communication of emotions in humans with those in animals, using a comparative approach. With the communication of emotions being an important research topic for a range of scientific fields, this book is valuable for those in the fields of animal behaviour, anthropology, evolutionary biology, human psychology, linguistics, musicology, and neurology.

Table of Contents

Part A: Introductory Section
1. The evolutionary origin of multimodal synchronisation and emotional expression, M. Mortillaru, M. Mehu and K.R. Scherer
2. Primate precursors to human language: Beyond discontinuity, W.T. Fitch and K. Zuberbuhler
3. Brain networks for the encoding of emotions in communication sounds of human and nonhuman primates, J.P. Rauschecker
Part B: Different mammalian taxa
4. Sound communication in house mice: Emotions in their voices and ears?, G. Ehret
5. Vocalizations as indicators of emotional states in rats and cats, S. Brudzynks
6. Beyond echolocation: Emotional acoustic communication in bats, S. Schmidt
7. Emotional communication in African Elephants, J. Soltis
8. Toward the evolutionary roots of affective prosody in human acoustic communication: A comparative approach to mammalian voices, E. Zimmermann, L. Leliveld, and S. Schehka
9. Emotional communication in monkeys: Music to their ears?, C.T. Snowdon and D. Teie
Part C: Non-speech Human vocalizations
10. Infant crying and the synchrony of arousal, P. Zeskind
11. Understanding spontaneous human laughter: The role of voicing in inducing positive emotion, M. J. Owren, M. Philipp, E. Vanman, N. Trivedi, A. Schulman, and J.A. Bachorowski
12. Vocal expression of emotions in laughter, D. Szameitat, D. Wildgruber, and K. Alter
Part D: Human Prosody
13. An integrative model of brain processes for the decoding of emotional prosody, D. Grandjean and S. Fruhholz
14. On the orbito-striatal interface in (acoustic) emotional processing, S.A. Kotz, A.S. Hasting, and S. Paulmann
15. The role of dopamine in perception and expression of emotional communication in Parkinson's disease, C. Schroeder and R. Dengler
16. Vocal affect expression: Problems and promises, P.N. Juslin
Part E: Music
17. Towards a neurobiology of musical emotions, I. Peretz, W. Aube, and J. Armony
18. Acoustically mediated emotional contagion as an across-species homology underlying music processing, T. Fritz and S. Koelsch
19. A contribution to the evolutionary basis of music: Lessons from the chill-response, E. Altenmuller R. Kopiez, and O. Grewe
Part F: Summary: Where to go?
20. A cross-taxa concept of emotion in acoustic communication: An ethological perspective, 1. E. Altenmuller, S. Schmidt, and E. Zimmermann