In a study published in the May 14th online issue of Current Biology, Swiss researchers found that how a person says a word---with what tone and inflection---reveals whatever emotion they are feeling:

The researchers scanned the brains of 22 subjects -- 13 women, nine men -- as they listened to the voices of actors saying a "pseudosentence," which is a sentence of words that sound real but are actually made up.

The actors spoke the words in five ways -- with sadness, anger, joy, relief or a neutral tone. Using functional MRIs, the researchers tried to see if they could determine what emotion the subjects heard by looking at the reactions of their brains.

........

The researchers discovered that each emotion left a different "signature" in the part of the brain that handles the processing of sound.

"This should give insights into the way emotions are coded in the brain, but also tools to assess how different people experience events in different conditions," Vuilleumier said.

The research suggests that the brain considers emotion early on, as it processes sound, said Duke University neuroscientist Scott Huettel, who's familiar with the findings.

I've noted frequently that, while my son has limited speech and huge difficulties in processing words and language, he's often quite attuned to and aware of what is being said around us; he indeed seems to be very attentive to the "music" of language---to rhythm, tone, pitch, inflection. Words can be very loaded for him, with single words ("Gong Gong Po Po"---Cantonese for maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother; "burger"; "photos") having associations and meaning that go quite beyond their dictionary definitions. He often says these over-loaded words/phrases with a distinct pitch and tone, with a sort of melody, and often it's that melody that tips us off to how Charlie is feeling.

It's also noted that

"It's not clear whether the brain works the same way when it tries to understand emotion in written words, such as those in e-mails or text messages. "For the vast majority of people [in history], emotion as conveyed in written words is pretty modern," Huettel said. "You can think of how recently literacy has taken hold."

This is very much the case for Charlie whose efforts to learn to read continue---or rather, his efforts to learn to read words continue. Charlie learned to read music readily and quite quickly when he first learned to play the piano. In reading music, you see the note, you play the note, you hear the note, and those little black circles and lines are given instant, sonic, meaning. And while words and language and speech require Charlie to pause to process it all, music is something he's always liked---maybe I should rather say, has loved, and needs.

Jim and I got Charlie a new blue iPod a month ago as an early birthday gift. It's actually his fourth: The first (the original iPod Nano) that had Sesame Street songs on it (Charlie was about 6 then) flew through the air a few too many times, and I knew it was bad when an X appeared on the screen. #2 iPod ended up in a certain bathroom fixture from which there is no return. #3 was a little Shuffle that Charlie never was inclined towards; made me think that he really needed a screen for the visuals. So far it's been so good. Charlie learned to wear big noise-cancelling headphones this year; he never liked those little white earbuds too much.

Friday Charlie and I went into New York to celebrate Charlie's birthday. We planned to meet Jim at his office in midtown Manhattan and, after parking in Jersey City by my office, walked down Kennedy Boulevard to the PATH station. We took the B train up to Columbus Circle where we met Jim at Whole Foods and Charlie had his choice of whatever he wanted for his birthday dinner (which was pleasantly consumer in Jim's office). On the 1 train, Charlie asked for his iPod and headphones and kept them on as we walked a couple of blocks to the WTC PATH train, and on the PATH train, and back down Kennedy Boulevard, and all the time in the car till we got back home.

And the words of the scientist Huettel make a lot of sense to me:

"For the vast majority of people [in history], emotion as conveyed in written words is pretty modern........You can think of how recently literacy has taken hold."

It's a reminder to me that my Charlie's expressing plenty of the emotion that he feels, though not in words---and maybe they're not the best way to convey such, anyways.