An auditory domain in primate prefrontal cortex

Although neuroimaging studies confirm the frontal lobe's involvement in language processes and auditory working memory, the cellular and network basis of these functions is unclear. Physiological studies of the frontal lobe in non-human primates have focused on visual working memory and auditory spatial processing in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), although the candidate PFC areas for non-spatial acoustic processing lie in the ventrolateral PFC (areas 12 and 45), which receives afferents from physiologically and anatomically defined auditory cortex. We recorded neuronal responses from ventrolateral PFC to auditory cues in awake monkeys under controlled conditions and report that the macaque ventrolateral PFC contains an auditory responsive domain in which neurons show responses to complex sounds, including animal and human vocalizations.

[1]  L. Benevento,et al.  Auditory-visual interaction in single cells in the cortex of the superior temporal sulcus and the orbital frontal cortex of the macaque monkey , 1977, Experimental Neurology.

[2]  M. Azuma,et al.  Properties and distribution of auditory neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the alert monkey , 1984, Brain Research.

[3]  E. Vaadia,et al.  Unit study of monkey frontal cortex: active localization of auditory and of visual stimuli. , 1986, Journal of neurophysiology.

[4]  T. Deacon.  Cortical connections of the inferior arcuate sulcus cortex in the macaque brain , 1992, Brain Research.

[5]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Dissociation of object and spatial processing domains in primate prefrontal cortex. , 1993, Science.

[6]  H. Tanila,et al.  Regional distribution of functions in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the monkey , 1993, Behavioural Brain Research.

[7]  J. Rauschecker,et al.  Processing of complex sounds in the macaque nonprimary auditory cortex. , 1995, Science.

[8]  P. Goldman-Rakic.  The prefrontal landscape: implications of functional architecture for understanding human mentation and the central executive. , 1996, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[9]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Areal segregation of face-processing neurons in prefrontal cortex. , 1997, Science.

[10]  C. Price.  The functional anatomy of word comprehension and production , 1998, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[11]  J. Desmond,et al.  The role of left prefrontal cortex in language and memory. , 1998, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[12]  M. Mishkin,et al.  Dual streams of auditory afferents target multiple domains in the primate prefrontal cortex , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[13]  J. Kaas,et al.  Prefrontal connections of the parabelt auditory cortex in macaque monkeys , 1999, Brain Research.

[14]  P. Goldman-Rakic,et al.  Auditory belt and parabelt projections to the prefrontal cortex in the Rhesus monkey , 1999, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[15]  J. Newman,et al.  Single unit analysis of auditory processing in squirrel monkey frontal cortex , 1976, Experimental Brain Research.