Signatures of emotional words

Abstract

Language is deeply imbued with emotion. Valence processing of emotional words has been well studied with neuroimaging; however, the neurochemical correlates remain unexplored. In model organisms, dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine neuromodulators are recruited during valence processing. A recent publication in Cell Reports describes the release patterns of these monoamines in humans performing an emotional Stroop task. Using a neurochemical inference strategy, the authors monitored dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine simultaneously in the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus in people performing the task while undergoing surgery for deep-brain stimulation for the treatment of essential tremor. The same electrochemical monitoring approach and task were used in a second cohort, which consisted of patients with epilepsy with stereo-EEG electrodes implanted in the anterior cingulate. The authors show distinct dynamics for different neuromodulators when words with positive or negative valence were presented, with some regional differences. They also observed left, but not right, hemisphere changes in dopamine release in response to positive words only, which echoes some theories of lateralized emotion processing. This promising methodology adds another dimension for the exploration of the spatiotemporal organization of the brain.

Original reference: Cell Rep. 44, 115162 (2025)