Dual streams of auditory afferents target multiple domains in the primate prefrontal cortex
L. M. Romanski1, B. Tian2, J. Fritz3, M. Mishkin3, P. S. Goldman-Rakic1
& J. P. Rauschecker2
1
Section of Neurobiology, B-413 SHM, 333 Cedar St., Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
2
Georgetown Institute for Cognitive and Computational Science, Georgetown University Medical Center, New Research Bldg., Rm. WP15, 3970 Reservoir Road NW, Washington, DC 20007-2197, USA
3
Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, Building 49, Room 1B80, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4415, USA
'What' and 'where' visual streams define ventrolateral object and dorsolateral spatial processing domains in the prefrontal cortex of nonhuman primates. We looked for similar streams for auditory−prefrontal connections in rhesus macaques by combining microelectrode recording with anatomical tract-tracing. Injection of multiple tracers into physiologically mapped regions AL, ML and CL of the auditory belt cortex revealed that anterior belt cortex was reciprocally connected with the frontal pole (area 10), rostral principal sulcus (area 46) and ventral prefrontal regions (areas 12 and 45), whereas the caudal belt was mainly connected with the caudal principal sulcus (area 46) and frontal eye fields (area 8a). Thus separate auditory streams originate in caudal and rostral auditory cortex and target spatial and non-spatial domains of the frontal lobe, respectively.
