Physiological Correlates and Neural Mechanisms of Vocal Communication

Z01 HD 01123-10 LCE和Z01 HD 01124-10 LCE是共同研究灵长类听觉交流的伙伴项目。这些研究的总体目标是从发育、神经机制、内分泌因素和社会背景等方面全面了解灵长类听觉交流。两种非人类灵长类动物，松鼠猴和普通绒猴是主要的研究对象，并在适当的情况下从其他物种收集额外的数据。该项目先前的工作表明，婴儿发出的声音在功能和声学上等同于婴儿的哭声，这些声音的产生是由边缘？研究发现，大脑皮质位于额叶前中线的大脑皮质，以及听觉皮质中的单个神经元件(颞上回)对特定物种发声的声音结构中的细微差异特别敏感，这表明在调节个体差异(发声特征)方面发挥了重要作用。对内分泌机制的研究表明，内源性催乳素水平与婴儿提取测试中的携带时间相关，通过使用溴隐亭(一种多巴胺激动剂)减少催乳素会干扰婴儿提取。2000财年的新发现是：(A)外周给予阿片激动剂硫酸吗啡可增加幼猴的游戏行为，而阿片拮抗剂纳洛酮可降低幼猴的玩耍行为；(B)成年雌性松鼠猴子的催乳素水平与它们与其组中的婴儿从事的附属行为的数量显著相关(雌性松鼠充当？阿姨？(C)一种新的大脑组织模型，即沟通脑，？假设在所有陆地脊椎动物中发现的一套神经结构直接参与发声，经历了保守的进化史，并在包括人类在内的广泛物种中调节相同的发声功能类别。

Z01 HD 01123-10 LCE and Z01 HD 01124-10 LCE are companion projects that together investigate auditory communication in primates. The overall goal of these studies is to provide a comprehensive understanding of primate auditory communication in terms of development, neural mechanisms, endocrine factors, and social context. Two non-human primates, the squirrel monkey and common marmoset, are the main subjects of study, with additional data collected from other species where appropriate. Prior work in this project has shown that production of sounds that are the functional and acoustic equivalents of cry sounds in human infants are mediated by ?limbic? cortex located along the anterior midline of the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, and that single neural elements in the auditory cortex (superior temporal gyrus) are particularly responsive to subtle differences in the acoustic structure of species-specific vocalizations, suggesting an important role in mediating individual differences (?vocal signatures?). Studies of endocrine mechanisms have shown that endogenous prolactin levels correlate with carrying time in infant retrieval tests, and that reducing prolactin by administering bromocryptine (a dopamine agonist) disrupts infant retrieval. New findings for FY2000 are (a) play behavior in juvenile marmosets is increased by administering the opiate agonist morphine sulfate peripherally, and decreased by the opiate antagonist naloxone; (b) prolactin levels of adult female squirrel monkeys are significantly associated with amount of affiliative behavior that they engage in with infants in their group (where the females serve as ?aunts? to the infants born to other females in the group); (c) a new model of brain organization, the ?communicating brain,? posits that a suite of neural structures found in all land vertebrates and shown to be directly involved in vocal production have experienced a conservative evolutionary history, and mediate the same functional categories of vocalizations in a wide range of species, including humans.