Audiovisual Integration in the Prefrontal Cortex

社会交往在很大程度上依赖于感官、情感和认知信息的整合。 大脑区域的网络。当许多大脑区域整合听觉和视觉信息时， 脑叶（IFG）接受来自多种形式的丰富感觉传入，影响许多大脑 参与运动和认知过程的区域，并在我们的言语和语言中发挥重要作用 流程.灵长类动物腹外侧前额叶皮层（VLPFC）的先前研究， 人类IFG，揭示了神经元对物种特异性面孔和发声的选择性反应 并对这些交流刺激进行复杂的整合。此外，VLPFC在 跨通道工作记忆VLPFC的这些不同功能发生在几个细胞结构区域， 每一个都接受不同的解剖学传入，并表现出不同的感觉和认知能力。 应答不能整合面部和声音信息会损害语音处理，语言学习， 识别和语义处理，所有VLPFC参与的社会沟通的基本要素 in.因此，识别VLPFC亚单位的整合和细胞功能将阐明VLPFC的组织结构。 灵长类动物的额叶及其在交流障碍中的作用。在这份提案中，我们将确定 面部和声音信息的组成部分整合在VLPFC子区域内， 这些次区域一体化的根本机制。在目标1中，我们将研究面部的哪些特征， 声音信息是否被整合，以及VLPFC的子区域是否处理和整合这些刺激 不同的（即什么是集成在哪里）。我们假设VLFPC的模态特异性亚区将 对面部和声音刺激的spectrotemporal特征的操纵表现出不同的反应。在目标2中， 我们将研究面部和声音刺激是如何被单个神经元整合并同时跨 在动态自然主义视听刺激的呈现过程中录制的合奏。特别是我们将 确定VLPFC神经元是否执行时分复用，其中对面部发声的神经反应 一部电影显示了在面部或声音的神经表征之间来回"切换"的证据 在整合过程中的激励。此外，我们将降低视听对中的面部和声音刺激， 为了在整合期间选择性地减少面部或声音刺激的贡献， 这是如何影响我们对这些反应的时间模型的合并响应的集合记录， 自然主义刺激在旧世界灵长类动物的前额皮质与新的计算方法，将提供 关于我们如何组合联合收割机社交信息的新的和有价值的数据。这一点特别关系到 理解智力障碍如自闭症谱系障碍的感觉整合的变化。

Social communication depends on the integration of sensory, emotional and cognitive information by a large network of brain regions. While many brain regions integrate auditory and visual information, the inferior frontal lobes (IFG) receive a wealth of sensory afferents from multiple modalities, has influence over many brain regions involved in motor and cognitive processes, and plays a major role in our speech and language processes. Previous investigations in primate ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), a proposed homologue of human IFG, revealed that neurons are selectively responsive to species-specific faces and to vocalizations and perform complex integration of these communication stimuli. Furthermore, VLPFC is essential during crossmodal working memory. These varied functions of VLPFC occur over several cytoarchitectonic regions, each of which receives different anatomical afferents and demonstrates diverse sensory and cognitive responses. Inability to integrate face and vocal information impairs speech processing, language learning, recognition and semantic processing, all essential elements of social communication that VLPFC participates in. Hence, identifying the integrative and cellular functions of VLPFC subdivisions will clarify the organization of the primate frontal lobe and its role in disorders of communication. In this proposal, we will determine what components of face and vocal information are integrated within VLPFC subregions and what neural mechanism underlie integration in these subregions. In Aim 1, we will investigate which features of face and vocal information are integrated and whether subregions of VLPFC process and integrate these stimuli differently (i.e. What is integrated Where). We hypothesize that modality specific subregions of VLFPC will show differential responses to manipulations of spectrotemporal features of face and vocal stimuli. In Aim 2, we will interrogate how face and vocal stimuli are integrated by single neurons and across simultaneously recorded ensembles during the presentation of dynamic naturalistic audiovisual stimuli. In particular we will determine if VLPFC neurons perform time division multiplexing, where the neural response to face-vocalization movie shows evidence of “switching” back and forth between neural representations of the face or the vocal stimulus during integration. Furthermore we will degrade the face and vocal stimuli in an audiovisual pair in order to selectively diminish the contribution of the face or the vocal stimuli during integration and to determine how this affects our temporal model of these responses. Merging ensemble recordings of responses to naturalistic stimuli in the prefrontal cortex of Old World Primates with novel computational methods, will provide new and valuable data on how we combine social communication information. This is of particular relevance to understanding changes in sensory integration in intellectual disabilities such as autism spectrum disorders.