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

Mathilda Froesel , Maëva Gacoin (1) , Simon Clavagnier (2) , Marc Hauser , Quentin Goudard , Suliann Ben Hamed (1)

1 ISC-MJ - Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod - Centre de neuroscience cognitive - UMR5229
2 SBRI - Institut cellule souche et cerveau / Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute

Social interactions rely on the interpretation of semantic and emotional information, often from multiple sensory modalities. Nonhuman primates send and receive auditory and visual communicative signals. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the association of visual and auditory information based on their common social meaning are unknown. Using heart rate estimates and functional neuroimaging, we show that in the lateral and superior temporal sulcus of the macaque monkey, neural responses are enhanced in response to species-specific vocalisations paired with a matching visual context, or when vocalisations follow, in time, visual information, but inhibited when vocalisation are incongruent with the visual context. For example, responses to affiliative vocalisations are enhanced when paired with affiliative contexts but inhibited when paired with aggressive or escape contexts. Overall, we propose that the identified neural network represents social meaning irrespective of sensory modality. 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,;

Domaines: Neurosciences

Mathilda Froesel, Maëva Gacoin, Simon Clavagnier, Marc Hauser, Quentin Goudard, et al.. Socially meaningful visual context either enhances or inhibits vocalisation processing in the macaque brain. Nature Communications, 2022, 13, ⟨10.1038/s41467-022-32512-9⟩. ⟨hal-03872771⟩