A functional role for the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in non-spatial auditory cognition

doi:10.1073/pnas.0907248106

A functional role for the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in non-spatial auditory cognition

^aDepartment of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, 3400 Spruce-5 Ravdin, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
^bDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; and
^cDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, 6207 Moore, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755

Edited by Mortimer Mishkin, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, and approved September 30, 2009 (received for review June 30, 2009)

Abstract

Spatial and non-spatial sensory information is hypothesized to be evaluated in parallel pathways. In this study, we tested the spatial and non-spatial sensitivity of auditory neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC), a cortical area in the non-spatial pathway. Activity was tested while non-human primates reported changes in an auditory stimulus' spatial or non-spatial features. We found that vPFC neurons were reliably modulated during a non-spatial auditory task but were not modulated during a spatial auditory task. The degree of modulation during the non-spatial task correlated positively with the monkeys' behavioral performance. These results are consistent with the hypotheses that the vPFC is part of a circuit involved in non-spatial auditory processing and that the vPFC plays a functional role in non-spatial auditory cognition.

Footnotes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ycohen{at}mail.med.upenn.edu
Author contributions: Y.E.C., B.E.R., S.J.D., A.E.B., and A.L.A. designed research; Y.E.C., S.J.D., A.E.B., A.L.A., and R.N. performed research; Y.E.C. and B.E.R. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.E.C. analyzed data; and Y.E.C., B.E.R., S.J.D., A.E.B., A.L.A., and R.N. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0907248106/DCSupplemental.