Functional Mapping of the Primate Auditory System

Abstract

Cerebral auditory areas were delineated in the awake, passively listening, rhesus monkey by comparing the rates of glucose utilization in an intact hemisphere and in an acoustically isolated contralateral hemisphere of the same animal. The auditory system defined in this way occupied large portions of cerebral tissue, an extent probably second only to that of the visual system. Cortically, the activated areas included the entire superior temporal gyrus and large portions of the parietal, prefrontal, and limbic lobes. Several auditory areas overlapped with previously identified visual areas, suggesting that the auditory system, like the visual system, contains separate pathways for processing stimulus quality, location, and motion.

Volumetric vs. surface-based alignment for localization of auditory cortex activation

“…The involvement of the dorsal bank of left STS in speech perception is also supported by physiological studies in non-human primates, suggesting auditory sensitivity in this region but not in the ventral bank of STS (Baylis et al, 1987;Seltzer and Pandya, 1994;Poremba et al, 2003).…”

Wernicke's area homologue in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and its relation to the appearance of modern human language

“…Functional imaging studies in non-human primates also indicate the existence of asymmetric hemispheric activation of auditory areas in the superior temporal gyrus, including area Tpt (Poremba et al 2003(Poremba et al , 2004. In particular, the posterior portion of the right superior temporal gyrus processes a wide variety of auditory stimuli in macaques (Poremba et al 2003(Poremba et al , 2004, whereas the left hemisphere is specifically involved in the analysis of species-specific vocalizations, which activates the dorsal temporal pole (Poremba et al 2004). In addition, vocal calls have been demonstrated to elicit increased activity in area Tpt of macaques (Gil-da-Costa et al 2006) with seemingly greater intensity in the left hemisphere, although this pattern appeared variable among the three subjects studied.…”

“…The thalamocortical afferents to area Tpt, arising from the medial geniculate complex, however, suggest that it is primarily associated with auditory processing ) and may play a role discriminating the spatial location of sounds (Leinonen et al 1980). Accordingly, area Tpt of the left and right hemispheres has been demonstrated to be involved in the processing of species-specific vocalizations in Old World monkeys (Poremba et al 2003(Poremba et al , 2004Gil-da-Costa et al 2006) and chimpanzees (Taglialatela et al 2009). …”

Neural correlates of switching from auditory to speech perception

“…In primates, the cortical auditory system has been divided into two processing streams, a spatial stream projecting to the parietal cortex from the superior temporal gyrus and an object stream associated with vocalizations projecting to the anterior temporal and frontal areas (Poremba et al, 2003;Rauscheker and Tian, 2000). A similar distinction has been proposed for the human cortex.…”