Frontal-auditory cortical interactions and sensory prediction during vocal production in marmoset monkeys

The control of speech and vocal production involves the calculation of error between the intended vocal output and the resulting auditory feedback. This model has been supported by evidence that the auditory cortex (AC) is suppressed immediately before and during vocal production yet remains sensitive to differences between vocal output and altered auditory feedback. This suppression has been suggested to be the result of top-down signals about the intended vocal output, potentially originating from frontal cortical (FC) areas. However, whether FC is the source of suppressive and predictive signaling to AC during vocalization remains unknown. Here, we simultaneously recorded neural activity from both AC and FC of marmoset monkeys during self-initiated vocalizations. We found increases in neural activity in both brain areas from 1 to 0.5 s before vocal production (early pre-vocal period), specifically changes in both multi-unit activity and theta-band power. Connectivity analysis using Granger causality demonstrated that FC sends directed signaling to AC during this early pre-vocal period. Importantly, early pre-vocal activity correlated with both vocalization-induced suppression in AC as well as the structure and acoustics of subsequent calls, such as fundamental frequency. Furthermore, bidirectional auditory-frontal interactions emerged during experimentally altered vocal feedback and predicted subsequent compensatory vocal behavior. These results suggest that FC communicates with AC during vocal production, with frontal-to-auditory signals that may reflect the transmission of sensory prediction information before vocalization and bidirectional signaling during vocalization suggestive of error detection that could drive feedback-dependent vocal control.