Huaizhen Cai, Harry Shirley, Monty A Escabí, Yale E Cohen
{"title":"Distinct Cortical Populations Drive Multisensory Modulation of Segregated Auditory Sources.","authors":"Huaizhen Cai, Harry Shirley, Monty A Escabí, Yale E Cohen","doi":"10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0057-25.2025","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Auditory perception can be modulated by other sensory stimuli. However, we do not fully understand the neural mechanisms that support multisensory behavior. Here, while male nonhuman primates detected a target vocalization that was embedded in a background chorus of vocalizations, we recorded spiking activity from the primary auditory cortex (A1). We found that a congruent video of a monkey eliciting the target vocalization improved the monkeys' behavior, relative to their performance when we only presented a static image of the monkey. As a proxy for the functional organization of A1, we compared the contribution of neurons with significant spectrotemporal response fields (STRFs) with those that had nonsignificant STRFs (nSTRFs). Because, on average, STRF and nSTRF neurons have different spike waveform shapes, firing rates, and neural-correlation structure, we hypothesized that they might belong to different neural populations. Consistent with this, we found that, although STRF neurons encode stimulus information through synchronized activity, task-related information in the primate A1 is encoded more as a structured dynamic process in the population of nSTRF neurons. Together, these findings suggest that modulatory multisensory behavior is supported by nSTRF neurons and identifies, for the first time, a functional differentiation between the role that STRF and nSTRF neurons contribute to behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":50114,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Neuroscience","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12444874/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Neuroscience","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0057-25.2025","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"NEUROSCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Auditory perception can be modulated by other sensory stimuli. However, we do not fully understand the neural mechanisms that support multisensory behavior. Here, while male nonhuman primates detected a target vocalization that was embedded in a background chorus of vocalizations, we recorded spiking activity from the primary auditory cortex (A1). We found that a congruent video of a monkey eliciting the target vocalization improved the monkeys' behavior, relative to their performance when we only presented a static image of the monkey. As a proxy for the functional organization of A1, we compared the contribution of neurons with significant spectrotemporal response fields (STRFs) with those that had nonsignificant STRFs (nSTRFs). Because, on average, STRF and nSTRF neurons have different spike waveform shapes, firing rates, and neural-correlation structure, we hypothesized that they might belong to different neural populations. Consistent with this, we found that, although STRF neurons encode stimulus information through synchronized activity, task-related information in the primate A1 is encoded more as a structured dynamic process in the population of nSTRF neurons. Together, these findings suggest that modulatory multisensory behavior is supported by nSTRF neurons and identifies, for the first time, a functional differentiation between the role that STRF and nSTRF neurons contribute to behavior.
期刊介绍:
JNeurosci (ISSN 0270-6474) is an official journal of the Society for Neuroscience. It is published weekly by the Society, fifty weeks a year, one volume a year. JNeurosci publishes papers on a broad range of topics of general interest to those working on the nervous system. Authors now have an Open Choice option for their published articles