Abstract
Vocal communication is crucial for animals’ survival, but the underlying neural mechanism remains largely unclear. Using calcium imaging of large neuronal populations in the primary auditory cortex (A1) of head-fixed awake marmosets, we found specific ensembles of A1 neurons that responded selectively to distinct monosyllables or disyllables in natural marmoset calls. These selective responses were stable over one-week recording time, and disyllable-selective cells completely lost selective responses after anesthesia. No selective response was found for novel disyllables constructed by reversing the sequence of constituent monosyllables or by extending the interval between them beyond ∼1 second. These findings indicate that neuronal selectivity to natural calls exists in A1 and pave the way for studying circuit mechanisms underlying vocal communication in awake non-human primates.
One Sentence Summary Primary auditory cortex neurons in awake marmosets can encode the sequence and interval of syllables in natural calls.