Integration of audiovisual motion in dorsolateral prefrontal cortical neurons.

Abstract

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is well recognized for its role in cognitive functions and activating action plans. In contrast, the properties of prefrontal neurons and their role in multisensory processing are less well studied. To address this question, we recorded the responses of single units from areas 8 and 46 of two female rhesus macaques while they were presented with visual, auditory, and audiovisual motion stimuli. The majority of DLPFC neurons responded to these sensory stimuli, with similar percentages of auditory-only, visual-only, and audiovisual neurons. Approximately one-third of responsive neurons exhibited significant super- or subadditive interactions in response to the pairing of auditory and visual stimuli, revealing significant nonlinearities in their responses. Decoding motion signals from the population activity robustly differentiated multisensory from unisensory trials and also unisensory auditory and visual trials from each other. These results demonstrate that dorsolateral prefrontal neurons integrate auditory and visual motion signals, extending multisensory computations beyond sensory cortices into prefrontal circuits that support higher-order cognition.NEW & NOTEWORTHY We recorded single neurons in macaque dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during visual, auditory, and audiovisual motion. Nearly half of the responsive neurons were multisensory, and a third displayed significant super- or subadditive interactions, while ensemble activity reliably decoded stimulus modality. These findings provide direct evidence that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) performs rapid, nonlinear audiovisual integration, extending multisensory computations beyond classical posterior regions into the prefrontal circuits that support cognition.