Vocal emotions on the brain : the role of acoustic parameters and musicality The human voice is a powerful transmitter of emotions. This dissertation addresses three main gaps in the field of vocal emotion perception. The first is the quantification of the relative contribution of fundamental frequency (F0) and timbre cues to the perception of different emotions and their associated electrophysiological correlates. Using parameter specific voice morphing the results show that both F0 and timbre carry unique information that allow emotional inferences although F0 seems to be relatively more important overall. The electrophysiological data revealed F0 and timbre specific modulations in several ERP components such as the P200 and the N400. Second it was explored how musicality affects the processing of emotional voice cues by providing a review on the literature linking musicality to emotion perception and subsequently showing that musicians have a benefit in vocal emotion perception compared to non musicians. The present data offer original insight into the special role of pitch cues: musicians outperformed non musicians when emotions were expressed by the pitch contour only but not when they were expressed by vocal timbre. Although the electrophysiological patterns were less conclusive they imply that musicality may modulate brain responses to vocal emotions. Third this work provides a critical reflection on parameter specific voice morphing and its suitability to study the processing of vocal emotions. Distortions in voice naturalness resulting from extreme acoustic manipulations were identified as one of the major threats to the ecological validity of the stimulus material produced with this technique. However the results suggested that while voice morphing does affect the perceived naturalness of stimuli behavioral measures of emotion perception were found to be remarkably robust against these distortions. Thus the present data advocate parameter specific voice morphing as a valid tool for vocal emotional research.