Socially meaningful visual context either enhances or inhibits vocalisation processing in the macaque brain

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Primate Social Cognition
• Interspecies Communication

Background:

• Social interactions require integrating multisensory information, including auditory and visual signals.
• Nonhuman primates utilize vocal and visual signals for communication.
• Neural mechanisms for associating multisensory social information remain largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural basis of integrating auditory and visual social cues in macaque monkeys.
• To determine how the brain associates vocalizations with visual contexts based on social meaning.

Main Methods:

• Utilized functional neuroimaging and heart rate estimation in macaque monkeys.
• Presented species-specific vocalizations paired with congruent and incongruent visual social contexts.
• Analyzed neural responses in the lateral and superior temporal sulcus.

Main Results:

• Neural responses in the temporal sulcus were enhanced for congruent auditory-visual social cues.
• Neural responses were inhibited when vocalizations and visual contexts were incongruent.
• Affiliative vocalizations with affiliative contexts showed enhanced neural responses, while aggressive contexts showed inhibition.

Conclusions:

• The lateral and superior temporal sulcus forms a neural network for processing social meaning.
• This network integrates information across sensory modalities, irrespective of the specific input.
• Findings shed light on the neural underpinnings of complex social cognition in primates.