“The voice of the emotions: emotional prosody processing in neurodegenerative disorders and healthy individuals”

This PhD thesis investigates how emotional prosody, the decoding of emotions from vocal cues, is processed in the brain, with a particular focus on the contribution of cerebello–cortical networks. Study 1 provides a systematic review of evidence on emotional prosody in Parkinson’s disease, highlighting involvement of distributed fronto-striatal and limbic networks and suggesting selective vulnerability for less salient emotions, with potential effects of symptom lateralization. Study 2 compares performance in a vocal emotion recognition task across healthy controls and clinical groups (Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease), showing reduced accuracy in all patient groups (MCI often intermediate) and dissociable response-time patterns across conditions. Study 3 tests a causal role of the cerebellum in healthy participants by combining cerebellar tDCS with prefrontal fNIRS, indicating that right cerebellar stimulation can improve processing efficiency and modulate prefrontal hemodynamic responses during emotion recognition. Overall, the findings support emotional prosody as a sensitive marker of socio-cognitive changes in neurodegenerative disorders and point to cerebello–prefrontal circuits as a promising target for assessment and neuromodulation.