Summary: Scientists have uncovered how neurotransmitters in the mind react to the emotional content of speech, shedding light on the crossroads of feeling, thinking, and conversation. Using sophisticated techniques, the team instantly measured dopamine, norepinephrine, and norepinephrine launch in patients during exposure to physically paid words.
They challenge preconceived notions about how neurotransmitters work in mental and verbal control by uncovering different patterns of hormone engagement across brain regions like the thalamus and anterior cingulate cortex.
These results suggest that complex human functions like language interpretation are supported by mental systems evolved for life. Validation in animal designs confirmed these trends, paving the way for future research on decision-making and emotional wellbeing.
Major Information
- Hormone Exercise: Dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine respond exclusively to personal words, with specific patterns tied to mental tone and brain regions.
- Surprising Role for Thalamus: The brain, no usually linked to vocabulary or emotion, showed serotonin changes, suggesting broader involvement in psychological processing.
- Pet Model Validation: Cholinergic experiments in mammals confirmed findings, bolstering their importance for understanding human mind functions.
Origin: Virginia Tech
Researchers have discovered that neurons in the human mind are released during the processing of the emotional content of speech in an exceptional new study in the journal Cell Reports,  , giving new insight into how people interpret the meaning of words.
A global team led by Virginia Tech experts has contributed to the research’s investigation into how speech affects people’s decisions and emotional health.
Spearheaded by mathematical scientist Read Montague, a teacher of the , Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC , and chairman of the institution’s Center for Human Neuroscience Research, the study represents a first-of-its-kind exploration of how neurotransmitters process the personal content of language— a exclusively human function.
The discovery, now online and slated for the Jan. 28 issue of , Cell Reports,  , bridges the biological and the symbolic, linking neural processes that likely have evolved for survival in a vast array of species over the eons to the richness of human communication and emotion.
” The common belief about brain chemicals, like dopamine and serotonin, is that they send out signals related to the positive or negative value of experiences”, said Montague, co-corresponding and co-senior author of the study.
” Our findings suggest that these chemicals are released in particular areas of the brain as we process the emotional meaning of words.”
Our research supports the idea that the brain systems that evolved to help us react to good or bad things in our environment might also play a role in how we process words, which are just as crucial for our survival, in general.
In the context of the complex brain dynamics that underlie how people interpret and respond to language, the researchers are the first to simultaneously measure dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine release in humans.  ,
” The emotional content of words is shared across multiple transmitter systems, but each system fluctuates differently,”  , Montague , said.
” There’s no single brain region handling this activity, and it’s not as simple as one chemical representing one emotion.”
For the purpose of the surgical implantation of leads to monitor seizures in epilepsy patients, patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery were subjected to neurochemical measurements for the treatment of essential tremor.
The thalamus and the anterior cingulate cortex, respectively, are two distinct brain regions that are targeted by the procedures.  ,
While emotive words were projected on a screen, measurements were made using carbon fiber electrodes in the thalamus and conventional platinum-iridium electrodes in the cingulate cortex.
The researchers discovered the words — positive, negative, or neutral — modulate neurotransmitter release.
By measuring the sub-second dynamics of the releases, they identified distinct patterns tied to emotional tone, anatomical regions, and which hemisphere of the brain was involved.
” The surprising result came from the thalamus,” said William” Matt” Howe, an assistant professor with the School of Neuroscience of the Virginia Tech , College of Science.
Although it is not known whether this region participates in the processing of language or emotional content, neurotransmitters change in response to emotional words. This suggests that even brain regions that aren’t typically associated with emotional or linguistic processing may still be able to access that information.
For instance, areas of the brain that control movement might benefit from having access to emotionally relevant data to guide behavior.
Although the main discovery was made in people, animal models’ validation gave more assurance in the findings.  ,
Using a method known as optogenetics, Alec Hartle, a co-first author of the study and a doctoral student at Howe’s lab in the School of Neuroscience, conducted experiments on rodent models to verify the patterns seen in humans.
It made it possible for scientists to study the functions of particular neurons and neural circuits by controlling genetically modified cells with light.
” What we observed in the human brain was extraordinary”, said Howe, co-corresponding and co-senior author of the study.
The validation of these neurotransmitters in animals supports and strengthens these wider applications to decision-making systems.
The new findings build on a recent study released in , Nature Human Behavior,  , in which the research group highlighted dopamine and serotonin’s roles in social behavior.
Seth Batten, the first author of the study and a senior research associate with the Montague laboratory, said,” This research explores something uniquely human: the emotional content of written words,” whereas previous studies focused on neurotransmission during decision-making.
” Unlike animals, humans can understand words, their context, and meaning. The study examines how neurotransmitter systems interpret words with various emotional weight, supporting the hypothesis that these systems, which evolved to keep us alive, now also aid in language interpretation.
The study’s significance lies in its fundamentality and the questions it raises for future research, despite its still-future nature.
The words used in the study were drawn from the Affective Norms for English Words ( ANEW ) database, which rates words by positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence.
About this language, emotion, and neuroscience research news
Author: John Pastor
Source: Virginia Tech
Contact: John Pastor – Virginia Tech
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
Read Montague and colleagues ‘” In the human thalamus and cortex, emotional words cause region and valence-specific simultaneous neuromodulator release patterns.. Cell Reports
Abstract
In the human thalamus and cortex, emotional words cause region and valence-specific simultaneous neuromodulator release patterns.
Words represent a uniquely human information channel: people use them to express their thoughts and feelings and to give experience emotional value.
Work from model organisms suggests that valence assignments are carried out in part by the neuromodulators dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
Here, we ask whether valence signaling by these neuromodulators extends to word semantics in humans by measuring sub-second neuromodulator dynamics in the thalamus ( N , = 13 ) and anterior cingulate cortex ( N , = 6 ) of individuals evaluating positive, negative, and neutrally valenced words.
Our combined findings indicate that region- and valence-specific response patterns, as well as hemispheric dependence for dopamine release in the anterior cingulate, are modulated by valenced words in both the thalamus and cortex.
Overall, these experiments provide evidence that neuromodulator-dependent valence signaling extends to word semantics in humans, but not in a simple one-valence-per-transmitter fashion.
