Spontaneous processing of abstract categorical information in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Cohen, Yale E.; Hauser, Marc D.; Russ, Brian E.

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2005.0436

Cited by 50 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Abbreviations are the same as in Figure 3. between calls from different categories that have similar semantic meaning. In additional studies, Cohen et al (2006) have shown that there is more information in the responses of single neurons about different calls within the category nonfood than within the category food, but they did not indicate the amount of information about stimuli across categories. Another important point is that categorical representations are nonlinear functions of the acoustics (Nearey, 1997), as we have shown here with the HMM model, so that distinctions between categorical and acoustic representations come down to distinctions between linear and nonlinear representations of acoustic information, which are difficult distinctions to make in the brain, because most representations are nonlinear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic Encoding of Vocalizations in Macaque Ventral Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Averbeck¹,

Romanski²

2006

J. Neurosci.

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We examined strategies for classifying macaque vocalizations into their corresponding categories, as well as whether or not there was evidence that prefrontal auditory neurons were related to this process. We found that static estimates of the spectral and temporal contrasts of the calls were not effective features for discriminating among the call classes. A hidden Markov model (HMM), however, was more effective at discriminating among the call classes, reaching a performance of almost 75% correct. Finally, we found that the responses of prefrontal auditory neurons could be predicted more effectively as linear functions of the probabilistic output of the HMM than as linear functions of the spectral features of the calls. This provides evidence that, for call recognition, the macaque auditory system likely performs dynamic processing of vocalizations, and that prefrontal auditory neurons carry a signal related to the output of this processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic Encoding of Vocalizations in Macaque Ventral Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Averbeck¹,

Romanski²

2006

J. Neurosci.

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“…Studies in macaque monkeys have shown that vocalizations can form discrete categories based on their spectro-temporal acoustic profile . These categories might be generated from acoustic cues and represented in the anterior ventral stream (Rauschecker, 2012) and categorized by the IFC (Cohen et al, 2006Gifford et al, 2005;Russ et al, 2008b). Indeed, recent animal studies have identified neurons in the IFC (see Fig.…”

Section: Origins Of the Ifc Sensitivity To Vocal Intonationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead of low-level auditory features, these neurons seem to Single cell activity was usually recorded in BA 45A and BA 9/46v, both located rostrally to BA 8Av below the principal sulcus. Color-coded dots refer to the following studies: (Gifford et al, 2005), Romanski et al, 2005), (Cohen et al, 2007Russ et al, 2008a), (Romanski and Goldman-Rakic, 2002), (Cohen et al, 2006), (Lee et al, 2009;Russ et al, 2008b), (Sugihara et al, 2006), and (Gil-da-Costa et al, 2006) for activity in the vPM. Abbreviations: as arcuate sulcus, cs central sulcus, ipd inferior precentral dimple, ls lateral sulcus, ps principal sulcus, vpm ventral premotor area.…”

Section: Origins Of the Ifc Sensitivity To Vocal Intonationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…decode higher-order information conveyed by those vocalizations (Cohen et al, 2007). This decoding is probably based on a sensitivity to the acoustic morphology of conspecific vocalizations (Romanski et al, 2005), which help to differentiate several types of vocalizations (Cohen et al, 2006Gifford et al, 2005;Russ et al, 2008b). Animal nonverbal vocalizations of primates might figure as precursors of human language (Hauser, 1997), given their comparability of internal structure (Zoloth and Green, 1979) and their functional similarity in social communications (Arnold and Zuberbuhler, 2006), as well as the developmental trajectories in the underlying cortical network Rauschecker, 2012;Rilling et al, 2008;Thiebaut de Schotten et al, 2012).…”

Section: Origins Of the Ifc Sensitivity To Vocal Intonationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Processing of emotional vocalizations in bilateral inferior frontal cortex

Frühholz

Grandjean

2013

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

103

100

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a b s t r a c tA current view proposes that the right inferior frontal cortex (IFC) is particularly responsible for attentive decoding and cognitive evaluation of emotional cues in human vocalizations. Although some studies seem to support this view, an exhaustive review of all recent imaging studies points to an important functional role of both the right and the left IFC in processing vocal emotions. Second, besides a supposed predominant role of the IFC for an attentive processing and evaluation of emotional voices in IFC, these recent studies also point to a possible role of the IFC in preattentive and implicit processing of vocal emotions. The studies specifically provide evidence that both the right and the left IFC show a similar anterior-to-posterior gradient of functional activity in response to emotional vocalizations. This bilateral IFC gradient depends both on the nature or medium of emotional vocalizations (emotional prosody versus nonverbal expressions) and on the level of attentive processing (explicit versus implicit processing), closely resembling the distribution of terminal regions of distinct auditory pathways, which provide either global or dynamic acoustic information. Here we suggest a functional distribution in which several IFC subregions process different acoustic information conveyed by emotional vocalizations. Although the rostro-ventral IFC might categorize emotional vocalizations, the caudo-dorsal IFC might be specifically sensitive to their temporal features.

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“…The vPFC is thought to be part of a circuit involved in representing auditory objects (Cohen et al 2004b;Rauschecker 1998;Romanski et al 1999 Romanski et al , 2005. In particular, the vPFC may be part of a circuit that processes socially meaningful signals (Cohen et al 2006;Deacon 1992;Gifford 3rd et al 2005).A fuller and more comprehensive understanding of vocalization processing in the vPFC requires that we understand the acoustic features of the rhesus vocalizations and how these acoustic features relate to neural activity. We first characterized the acoustic structure of rhesus vocalizations by calculating their modulation spectra; the modulation spectrum quantifies the spectral and temporal features of an auditory stimulus as seen in a spectrographic representation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic Features of Rhesus Vocalizations and Their Representation in the Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex

Cohen¹,

Theunissen²,

Russ³

et al. 2007

Journal of Neurophysiology

101

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tion is one of the fundamental components of both human and nonhuman animal behavior. Auditory communication signals (i.e., vocalizations) are especially important in the socioecology of several species of nonhuman primates such as rhesus monkeys. In rhesus, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) is thought to be part of a circuit involved in representing vocalizations and other auditory objects. To further our understanding of the role of the vPFC in processing vocalizations, we characterized the spectrotemporal features of rhesus vocalizations, compared these features with other classes of natural stimuli, and then related the rhesus-vocalization acoustic features to neural activity. We found that the range of these spectrotemporal features was similar to that found in other ensembles of natural stimuli, including human speech, and identified the subspace of these features that would be particularly informative to discriminate between different vocalizations. In a first neural study, however, we found that the tuning properties of vPFC neurons did not emphasize these particularly informative spectrotemporal features. In a second neural study, we found that a first-order linear model (the spectrotemporal receptive field) is not a good predictor of vPFC activity. The results of these two neural studies are consistent with the hypothesis that the vPFC is not involved in coding the first-order acoustic properties of a stimulus but is involved in processing the higher-order information needed to form representations of auditory objects. I N T R O D U C T I O NCommunication is one of the fundamental components of both human and nonhuman animal behavior (Hauser 1997). Although the benefits and importance of language in human evolution are obvious (Carruthers 2002;Hauser 1997;Lieberman 2002), other nonhuman communication systems are also important. These communication systems are important because for most, if not all, species they are critical to the species' survival (Andersson 1996;Bennett et al. 1997;Greenfield 2002;Hauser 1997;Lau et al. 2000;Mech and Boitani 2003).For example, auditory communication signals (i.e., speciesspecific vocalizations) are especially important in the socioecology of several species of nonhuman primates (Cheney and Seyfarth 1985;Eimas 1994;Eimas et al. 1971;Hauser 1997;Jusczyk 1997;Jusczyk et al. 1983; Miller and Eimas 1995), such as rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Vocalizations convey information about the identity and the age of the caller and often provide information about sex and emotional or motivational state (Cheney and Seyfarth 1990; Hauser 1997). Some vocalizations transmit information about objects and events in the environment (Gifford 3rd et al. 2003;Hauser 1998;Seyfarth and Cheney 2003).In rhesus monkeys, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) plays an important role in processing vocalizations (Hackett et al. 1999;Romanski and Goldman-Rakic 2002;Romanski et al. 1999 Romanski et al. , 2005. The vPFC is thought to be part of a circuit involved in representing au...

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Spontaneous processing of abstract categorical information in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Cited by 50 publications

References 33 publications

Probabilistic Encoding of Vocalizations in Macaque Ventral Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Probabilistic Encoding of Vocalizations in Macaque Ventral Lateral Prefrontal Cortex

Processing of emotional vocalizations in bilateral inferior frontal cortex

Acoustic Features of Rhesus Vocalizations and Their Representation in the Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex

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