Abstract
Marmosets have attracted significant interest in the life sciences. Similarities with human brain anatomy and physiology, such as the granular frontal cortex, as well as the development of transgenic lines and potential for transferring rodent neuroscientific techniques to small primates make them a promising neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric model system. However, whether marmosets can exhibit complex motor tasks in highly controlled experimental designs—one of the prerequisites for investigating higher-order control mechanisms underlying cognitive motor behavior—has not been demonstrated. We show that marmosets can be trained to perform vocal behavior in response to arbitrary visual cues in controlled operant conditioning tasks. Our results emphasize the marmoset as a suitable model to study complex motor behavior and the evolution of cognitive control underlying speech.
Highlights
To date, a variety of neurophysiological methods, as well as different brain imaging techniques have been successfully developed and established in marmosets, highlighting the potential for using these animals to study cognitive processes and their underlying neural network in different conditions and contexts[1,2]
Our findings show that marmoset monkeys can be trained to perform vocal behavior in a controlled experimental design suggesting their suitability as an innovative nonhuman primate model to decipher higher-order cognitive motor control mechanisms
Our findings demonstrate that marmoset monkeys are capable of volitionally initiating vocal-motor behavior in an operant conditioning task
Summary
A variety of neurophysiological methods, as well as different brain imaging techniques have been successfully developed and established in marmosets, highlighting the potential for using these animals to study cognitive processes and their underlying neural network in different conditions and contexts[1,2]. Vocal behavior is a complex behavior involving several groups of muscles, such as articulatory (orofacial and jaw), laryngeal and respiratory muscles, that are controlled by different motoneuron pools within the ventrolateral pontine brainstem and spinal cord that have to be coordinated in a precise timely manner to ensure proper call production[23,24]. We show that they are able to volitionally control their vocal output and use it as an immediate response to a learned, abstract visual cue, demonstrating the ability to instrumentalize their vocal output to perform a task successfully. Our findings show that marmoset monkeys can be trained to perform vocal behavior in a controlled experimental design suggesting their suitability as an innovative nonhuman primate model to decipher higher-order cognitive motor control mechanisms
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