Ghazanfar Asif A, Maier Joost X, Hoffman Kari L, Logothetis Nikos K
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany.
J Neurosci. 2005 May 18;25(20):5004-12. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0799-05.2005.
In the social world, multiple sensory channels are used concurrently to facilitate communication. Among human and nonhuman primates, faces and voices are the primary means of transmitting social signals (Adolphs, 2003; Ghazanfar and Santos, 2004). Primates recognize the correspondence between species-specific facial and vocal expressions (Massaro, 1998; Ghazanfar and Logothetis, 2003; Izumi and Kojima, 2004), and these visual and auditory channels can be integrated into unified percepts to enhance detection and discrimination. Where and how such communication signals are integrated at the neural level are poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear what role "unimodal" sensory areas, such as the auditory cortex, may play. We recorded local field potential activity, the signal that best correlates with human imaging and event-related potential signals, in both the core and lateral belt regions of the auditory cortex in awake behaving rhesus monkeys while they viewed vocalizing conspecifics. We demonstrate unequivocally that the primate auditory cortex integrates facial and vocal signals through enhancement and suppression of field potentials in both the core and lateral belt regions. The majority of these multisensory responses were specific to face/voice integration, and the lateral belt region shows a greater frequency of multisensory integration than the core region. These multisensory processes in the auditory cortex likely occur via reciprocal interactions with the superior temporal sulcus.
在社交世界中，多种感觉通道同时被用于促进交流。在人类和非人类灵长类动物中，面部和声音是传递社交信号的主要方式（阿道夫斯，2003年；加赞法尔和桑托斯，2004年）。灵长类动物能够识别特定物种的面部表情和声音表达之间的对应关系（马萨罗，1998年；加赞法尔和洛戈塞蒂斯，2003年；泉和小岛，2004年），并且这些视觉和听觉通道可以整合为统一的感知，以增强检测和辨别能力。这种交流信号在神经层面是在哪里以及如何整合的，目前还知之甚少。特别是，尚不清楚诸如听觉皮层等“单峰”感觉区域可能发挥什么作用。我们在清醒的恒河猴观看发出叫声的同种动物时，记录了听觉皮层核心区和外侧带区域的局部场电位活动，这是与人类成像和事件相关电位信号最相关的信号。我们明确证明，灵长类动物的听觉皮层通过增强和抑制核心区和外侧带区域的场电位来整合面部和声音信号。这些多感觉反应中的大多数对面部/声音整合具有特异性，并且外侧带区域比核心区域表现出更高频率的多感觉整合。听觉皮层中的这些多感觉过程可能是通过与颞上沟的相互作用而发生的。
