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Preliminary investigation of emotional voice judgment in healthy young adults using fNIRS: A foundation for future MCI research

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

YUKA YAMANO¹ (a21.ccmb@g.chuo-u.ac.jp), MICHIHIKO KOEDA², YUKI ISHIKAWA¹, YURIE SATO¹, IPPEITA DAN¹; ¹Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, ²Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Nippon Medical School, Tokyo, Japan

Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is a pre-dementia condition characterized by cognitive decline without significant interference in daily life. While some individuals with MCI progress to dementia, others exhibit cognitive recovery, emphasizing the importance of early identification and intervention. Although deficits in emotional judgment have been reported in dementia, little is known about this ability in individuals with MCI. Identifying changes in emotional judgment and differences from healthy adults may help detect early signs of MCI, as well as declines in social connectedness and psychological well-being associated with impaired emotion recognition. This study represents the first phase of a four-step project ultimately aiming to examine whether pharmacological interventions such as lecanemab (an anti-amyloid-β antibody drug) can help maintain emotional judgment ability in MCI. As a preliminary step, the present study investigates brain activation during emotional voice judgment in university students using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Screening will ensure that participants are right-handed and have no symptoms of depression or cognitive decline, based on standardized questionnaires validated in previous studies. During an event-related Go/No-go task, participants will respond to nonverbal emotional voices from the Montreal and Tokyo Affective Voice databases. We hypothesize that the bilateral superior temporal gyrus will be activated during emotional voice judgment, with no significant differences across emotional categories. The results will provide baseline data for validating the experimental design in future studies involving older adults and individuals with MCI.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions