Representation of Auditory Task Components and of Their Relationships in Primate Auditory Cortex.

Stanislava Knyazeva,Frank W Ohl,Elena Selezneva,Michael Brosch,Alexander Gorkin

doi:10.3389/fnins.2020.00306

Abstract

The current study aimed to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the literature on which mental processes affect auditory cortical activity. To this end, we studied auditory cortical firing in four monkeys with different experience while they were involved in six conditions with different arrangements of the task components sound, motor action, and water reward. Firing rates changed most strongly when a sound-only condition was compared to a condition in which sound was paired with water. Additional smaller changes occurred in more complex conditions in which the monkeys received water for motor actions before or after sounds. Our findings suggest that auditory cortex is most strongly modulated by the subjects’ level of arousal, thus by a psychological concept related to motor activity triggered by reinforcers and to readiness for operant behavior. Our findings also suggest that auditory cortex is involved in associative and emotional functions, but not in agency and cognitive effort.

Highlights

It is well established that neuronal activity in auditory cortex reflects sounds and other components of auditory tasks, including stimuli of other sensory modalities if relevant for the task, motor actions that are executed relative to sounds, as well as the reinforcers that motivate subjects to perform acoustically-guided actions (Scheich and Brosch, 2013)
We observed water-related firing in the auditory cortex of monkeys that had undergone classical conditioning of sounds with water
These observations indicate that water-related firing can be present in auditory cortex in many behavioral contexts and in subjects with different experiences of how they have learned the relationships between water, sounds and motor behavior

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It is well established that neuronal activity in auditory cortex reflects sounds and other components of auditory tasks, including stimuli of other sensory modalities if relevant for the task, motor actions that are executed relative to sounds, as well as the reinforcers that motivate subjects to perform acoustically-guided actions (Scheich and Brosch, 2013). The current study aimed to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the literature on which mental processes affect auditory cortical activity To this end, we recorded neuronal firing from the primary auditory cortex of monkeys while they were involved in six conditions differing in the arrangement of the task components sound, motor action, and water reward (Figure 1). We recorded neuronal firing from the primary auditory cortex of monkeys while they were involved in six conditions differing in the arrangement of the task components sound, motor action, and water reward (Figure 1) Conditions were designed such that comparison across conditions allowed to study the involvement of auditory cortex in various mental processes, including but not limited to sensorimotor association, sense of agency, effort and arousal.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

ETHICS STATEMENT