Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4415.
Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4415
J Neurosci. 2021 Feb 10;41(6):1301-1316. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2217-20.2020. Epub 2020 Dec 10.
Spatial selective listening and auditory choice underlie important processes including attending to a speaker at a cocktail party and knowing how (or whether) to respond. To examine task encoding and the relative timing of potential neural substrates underlying these behaviors, we developed a spatial selective detection paradigm for monkeys, and recorded activity in primary auditory cortex (AC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and the basolateral amygdala (BLA). A comparison of neural responses among these three areas showed that, as expected, AC encoded the side of the cue and target characteristics before dlPFC and BLA. Interestingly, AC also encoded the choice of the monkey before dlPFC and around the time of BLA. Generally, BLA showed weak responses to all task features except the choice. Decoding analyses suggested that errors followed from a failure to encode the target stimulus in both AC and dlPFC, but again, these differences arose earlier in AC. The similarities between AC and dlPFC responses were abolished during passive sensory stimulation with identical trial conditions, suggesting that the robust sensory encoding in dlPFC is contextually gated. Thus, counter to a strictly PFC-driven decision process, in this spatial selective listening task AC neural activity represents the sensory and decision information before dlPFC. Unlike in the visual domain, in this auditory task, the BLA does not appear to be robustly involved in selective spatial processing. We examined neural correlates of an auditory spatial selective listening task by recording single-neuron activity in behaving monkeys from the amygdala, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and auditory cortex. We found that auditory cortex coded spatial cues and choice-related activity before dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or the amygdala. Auditory cortex also had robust delay period activity. Therefore, we found that auditory cortex could support the neural computations that underlie the behavioral processes in the task.
空间选择性聆听和听觉选择是鸡尾酒会中注意到说话者并知道如何(或是否)做出反应等重要过程的基础。为了研究任务编码以及这些行为潜在神经基质的相对时间,我们为猴子开发了一种空间选择性检测范式,并记录了初级听觉皮层(AC)、背外侧前额叶皮层(dlPFC)和基底外侧杏仁核(BLA)的活动。对这三个区域的神经反应进行比较表明,如预期的那样,AC 在 dlPFC 和 BLA 之前编码了线索和目标特征的侧面。有趣的是,AC 甚至在 dlPFC 之前和 BLA 周围的时间编码了猴子的选择。通常,BLA 对所有任务特征的反应都很弱,除了选择。解码分析表明,错误是由于在 AC 和 dlPFC 中都无法编码目标刺激而导致的,但同样,这些差异在 AC 中更早出现。在具有相同试验条件的被动感觉刺激期间,AC 和 dlPFC 之间的反应相似性被消除,这表明 dlPFC 中的强大感觉编码受到上下文的限制。因此,与严格的 PFC 驱动的决策过程相反,在这个空间选择性聆听任务中,AC 神经活动在 dlPFC 之前代表感觉和决策信息。与视觉领域不同,在这个听觉任务中,BLA 似乎并没有强烈参与选择性空间处理。我们通过在行为猴子中记录杏仁核、背外侧前额叶皮层和听觉皮层的单个神经元活动,研究了听觉空间选择性聆听任务的神经相关物。我们发现,听觉皮层在背外侧前额叶皮层或杏仁核之前编码空间线索和与选择相关的活动。听觉皮层也有强大的延迟期活动。因此,我们发现听觉皮层可以支持该任务中行为过程的神经计算。