Giamundo Margherita, Trapeau Régis, Thoret Etienne, Renaud Luc, Brochier Thomas, Belin Pascal
Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille 13005, France.
Institute of Language Communication and the Brain, ILCB, Aix-en-Provence 13100, France.
Sci Adv. 2025 Aug 29;11(35):eadv7033. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adv7033.
The ability to recognize speakers by their voice despite acoustical variation plays a substantial role in primate social interactions. Although neurons in the macaque anterior temporal lobe (ATL) show invariance to face viewpoint, whether they also encode abstract representations of caller identity is not known. Here, we demonstrate that neurons in the voice-selective ATL of two macaques support invariant voice identity representations through dynamic population-level coding. These representations minimize neural distances across different vocalizations from the same individual while preserving distinct trajectories for different callers. This structure emerged from the coordinated activity of the broader neuronal ensemble, although a small subset of highly identity-selective neurons carried high identity information. Our findings provide a neural basis for voice identity recognition in primates and highlight the ATL as a key hub for integrating perceptual voice features into higher-level identity representations.
尽管存在声学变化，但通过声音识别说话者的能力在灵长类动物的社交互动中起着重要作用。虽然猕猴颞叶前部（ATL）中的神经元对面部视角表现出不变性，但它们是否也编码呼叫者身份的抽象表征尚不清楚。在这里，我们证明，两只猕猴的声音选择性ATL中的神经元通过动态群体水平编码支持不变的声音身份表征。这些表征在最小化来自同一个体的不同发声之间的神经距离的同时，保留了不同呼叫者的独特轨迹。这种结构源于更广泛神经元群体的协调活动，尽管一小部分高度身份选择性神经元携带了高身份信息。我们的发现为灵长类动物的声音身份识别提供了神经基础，并突出了ATL作为将感知语音特征整合到更高层次身份表征的关键枢纽。
