Social context and drug cues modulate inhibitory control in cocaine addiction: involvement of the STN evidenced through functional MRI.

Addictions often develop in a social context, although the influence of social factors did not receive much attention in the neuroscience of addiction. Recent animal studies suggest that peer presence can reduce cocaine intake, an influence potentially mediated, among others, by the subthalamic nucleus (STN). However, there is to date no neurobiological study investigating this mediation in humans. This study investigated the impact of social context and drug cues on brain correlates of inhibitory control in individuals with and without cocaine use disorder (CUD) using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Seventeen CUD participants and 17 healthy controls (HC) performed a novel fMRI "Social" Stop-Signal Task (SSST) in the presence or absence of an observer while being exposed to cocaine-related (vs. neutral) cues eliciting craving in drug users. The results showed that CUD participants, while slower at stopping with neutral cues, recovered control level stopping abilities with cocaine cues, while HC did not show any difference. During inhibition (Stop Correct vs Stop Incorrect), activity in the right STN, right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) varied according to the type of cue. Notably, the presence of an observer reversed this effect in most areas for CUD participants. These findings highlight the impact of social context and drug cues on inhibitory control in CUD and the mediation of these effects by the right STN and bilateral OFC, emphasizing the importance of considering the social context in addiction research. They also comfort the STN as a potential addiction treatment target.

Auditory hemispheric asymmetry for actions and objects.

What is the function of auditory hemispheric asymmetry? We propose that the identification of sound sources relies on the asymmetric processing of two complementary and perceptually relevant acoustic invariants: actions and objects. In a large dataset of environmental sounds, we observed that temporal and spectral modulations display only weak covariation. We then synthesized auditory stimuli by simulating various actions (frictions) occurring on different objects (solid surfaces). Behaviorally, discrimination of actions relies on temporal modulations, while discrimination of objects relies on spectral modulations. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data showed that actions and objects are decoded in the left and right hemispheres, respectively, in bilateral superior temporal and left inferior frontal regions. This asymmetry reflects a generic differential processing-through differential neural sensitivity to temporal and spectral modulations present in environmental sounds-that supports the efficient categorization of actions and objects. These results support an ecologically valid framework of the functional role of auditory brain asymmetry.

Action Observation Network Activity Related to Object-Directed and Socially-Directed Actions in Adolescents.

The human action observation network (AON) encompasses brain areas consistently engaged when we observe other's actions. Although the core nodes of the AON are present from childhood, it is not known to what extent they are sensitive to different action features during development. Because social cognitive abilities continue to mature during adolescence, the AON response to socially-oriented actions, but not to object-related actions, may differ in adolescents and adults. To test this hypothesis, we scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) male and female typically-developing teenagers (n = 28; 13 females) and adults (n = 25; 14 females) while they passively watched videos of manual actions varying along two dimensions: sociality (i.e., directed toward another person or not) and transitivity (i.e., involving an object or not). We found that action observation recruited the same fronto-parietal and occipito-temporal regions in adults and adolescents. The modulation of voxel-wise activity according to the social or transitive nature of the action was similar in both groups of participants. Multivariate pattern analysis, however, revealed that decoding accuracies in intraparietal sulcus (IPS)/superior parietal lobe (SPL) for both sociality and transitivity were lower for adolescents compared with adults. In addition, in the lateral occipital temporal cortex (LOTC), generalization of decoding across the orthogonal dimension was lower for sociality only in adolescents. These findings indicate that the representation of the content of others' actions, and in particular their social dimension, in the adolescent AON is still not as robust as in adults.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The activity of the action observation network (AON) in the human brain is modulated according to the purpose of the observed action, in particular the extent to which it involves interaction with an object or with another person. How this conceptual representation of actions is implemented during development is largely unknown. Here, using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, we discovered that, while the action observation network is in place in adolescence, the fine-grain organization of its posterior regions is less robust than in adults to decode the abstract social dimensions of an action. This finding highlights the late maturation of social processing in the human brain.

Early Left-Planum Temporale Asymmetry in newborn monkeys (Papio anubis): A longitudinal structural MRI study at two stages of development.

The "language-ready" brain theory suggests that the infant brain is pre-wired for language acquisition prior to language exposure. As a potential brain marker of such a language readiness, a leftward structural brain asymmetry was found in human infants for the Planum Temporale (PT), which overlaps with Wernicke's area. In the present longitudinal in vivo MRI study conducted in 35 newborn monkeys (Papio anubis), we found a similar leftward PT surface asymmetry. Follow-up rescanning sessions on 29 juvenile baboons at 7-10 months showed that such an asymmetry increases across the two ages classes. These original findings in non-linguistic primate infants strongly question the idea that the early PT asymmetry constitutes a human infant-specific marker for language development. Such a shared early perisylvian organization provides additional support that PT asymmetry might be related to a lateralized system inherited from our last common ancestor with Old-World monkeys at least 25-35 million years ago.

A collaborative resource platform for non-human primate neuroimaging.

Neuroimaging non-human primates (NHPs) is a growing, yet highly specialized field of neuroscience. Resources that were primarily developed for human neuroimaging often need to be significantly adapted for use with NHPs or other animals, which has led to an abundance of custom, in-house solutions. In recent years, the global NHP neuroimaging community has made significant efforts to transform the field towards more open and collaborative practices. Here we present the PRIMatE Resource Exchange (PRIME-RE), a new collaborative online platform for NHP neuroimaging. PRIME-RE is a dynamic community-driven hub for the exchange of practical knowledge, specialized analytical tools, and open data repositories, specifically related to NHP neuroimaging. PRIME-RE caters to both researchers and developers who are either new to the field, looking to stay abreast of the latest developments, or seeking to collaboratively advance the field .

The handwriting brain in middle childhood.

While the brain network supporting handwriting has previously been defined in adults, its organization in children has never been investigated. We compared the handwriting network of 23 adults and 42 children (8- to 11-year-old). Participants were instructed to write the alphabet, the days of the week, and to draw loops while being scanned. The handwriting network previously described in adults (five key regions: left dorsal premotor cortex, superior parietal lobule (SPL), fusiform and inferior frontal gyri, and right cerebellum) was also strongly activated in children. The right precentral gyrus and the right anterior cerebellum were more strongly activated in adults than in children, while the left fusiform gyrus (FuG) was more strongly activated in children than in adults. Finally, we found that, contrary to adults, children recruited prefrontal regions to complete the writing task. This constitutes the first comparative investigation of the neural correlates of writing in children and adults. Our results suggest that the network supporting handwriting is already established in middle childhood. They also highlight the major role of prefrontal regions in learning this complex skill and the importance of right precentral regions and cerebellum in the performance of automated handwriting.

Functional brain changes in the elderly for the perception of hand movements: A greater impairment occurs in proprioception than touch.

Unlike age-related brain changes linked to motor activity, neural alterations related to self-motion perception remain unknown. Using fMRI data, we investigated age-related changes in the central processing of somatosensory information by inducing illusions of right-hand rotations with specific proprioceptive and tactile stimulation. Functional connectivity during resting-state (rs-FC) was also compared between younger and older participants. Results showed common sensorimotor activations in younger and older adults during proprioceptive and tactile illusions, but less deactivation in various right frontal regions and the precuneus were found in the elderly. Older participants exhibited a less-lateralized pattern of activity across the primary sensorimotor cortices (SM1) in the proprioceptive condition only. This alteration of the interhemispheric balance correlated with declining individual performance in illusion velocity perception from a proprioceptive, but not a tactile, origin. By combining task-related data, rs-FC and behavioral performance, this study provided consistent results showing that hand movement perception was altered in the elderly, with a more pronounced deterioration of the proprioceptive system, likely due to the breakdown of inhibitory processes with aging. Nevertheless, older people could benefit from an increase in internetwork connectivity to overcome this kinesthetic decline.

Amygdalar nuclei and hippocampal subfields on MRI: Test-retest reliability of automated volumetry across different MRI sites and vendors.

BACKGROUND: The amygdala and the hippocampus are two limbic structures that play a critical role in cognition and behavior, however their manual segmentation and that of their smaller nuclei/subfields in multicenter datasets is time consuming and difficult due to the low contrast of standard MRI. Here, we assessed the reliability of the automated segmentation of amygdalar nuclei and hippocampal subfields across sites and vendors using FreeSurfer in two independent cohorts of older and younger healthy adults. METHODS: Sixty-five healthy older (cohort 1) and 68 younger subjects (cohort 2), from the PharmaCog and CoRR consortia, underwent repeated 3D-T1 MRI (interval 1-90 days). Segmentation was performed using FreeSurfer v6.0. Reliability was assessed using volume reproducibility error (ε) and spatial overlapping coefficient (DICE) between test and retest session. RESULTS: Significant MRI site and vendor effects (p â€‹< â€‹.05) were found in a few subfields/nuclei for the ε, while extensive effects were found for the DICE score of most subfields/nuclei. Reliability was strongly influenced by volume, as ε correlated negatively and DICE correlated positively with volume size of structures (absolute value of Spearman's r correlations >0.43, p â€‹< â€‹1.39E-36). In particular, volumes larger than 200 â€‹mm3 (for amygdalar nuclei) and 300 â€‹mm3 (for hippocampal subfields, except for molecular layer) had the best test-retest reproducibility (ε â€‹< â€‹5% and DICE â€‹> â€‹0.80). CONCLUSION: Our results support the use of volumetric measures of larger amygdalar nuclei and hippocampal subfields in multisite MRI studies. These measures could be useful for disease tracking and assessment of efficacy in drug trials.

Top-down activation of the visuo-orthographic system during spoken sentence processing.

The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOT) is considered the key area of the visuo-orthographic system. However, some studies reported that the area is also involved in speech processing tasks, especially those that require activation of orthographic knowledge. These findings suggest the existence of a top-down activation mechanism allowing such cross-modal activation. Yet, little is known about the involvement of the vOT in more natural speech processing situations like spoken sentence processing. Here, we addressed this issue in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study while manipulating the impacts of two factors, i.e., task demands (semantic vs. low-level perceptual task) and the quality of speech signals (sentences presented against clear vs. noisy background). Analyses were performed at the levels of whole brain and region-of-interest (ROI) focusing on the vOT voxels individually identified through a reading task. Whole brain analysis showed that processing spoken sentences induced activity in a large network including the regions typically involved in phonological, articulatory, semantic and orthographic processing. ROI analysis further specified that a significant part of the vOT voxels that responded to written words also responded to spoken sentences, thus, suggesting that the same area within the left occipitotemporal pathway contributes to both reading and speech processing. Interestingly, both analyses provided converging evidence that vOT responses to speech were sensitive to both task demands and quality of speech signals: Compared to the low-level perceptual task, activity of the area increased when efforts on comprehension were required. The impact of background noise depended on task demands. It led to a decrease of vOT activity in the semantic task but not in the low-level perceptual task. Our results provide new insights into the function of this key area of the reading network, notably by showing that its speech-induced top-down activation also generalizes to ecological speech processing situations.

Free water elimination improves test-retest reproducibility of diffusion tensor imaging indices in the brain: A longitudinal multisite study of healthy elderly subjects.

Free water elimination (FWE) in brain diffusion MRI has been shown to improve tissue specificity in human white matter characterization both in health and in disease. Relative to the classical diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) model, FWE is also expected to increase sensitivity to microstructural changes in longitudinal studies. However, it is not clear if these two models differ in their test-retest reproducibility. This study compares a bi-tensor model for FWE with DTI by extending a previous longitudinal-reproducibility 3T multisite study (10 sites, 7 different scanner models) of 50 healthy elderly participants (55-80 years old) scanned in two sessions at least 1 week apart. We computed the reproducibility of commonly used DTI metrics (FA: fractional anisotropy, MD: mean diffusivity, RD: radial diffusivity, and AXD: axial diffusivity), derived either using a DTI model or a FWE model. The DTI metrics were evaluated over 48 white-matter regions of the JHU-ICBM-DTI-81 white-matter labels atlas, and reproducibility errors were assessed. We found that relative to the DTI model, FWE significantly reduced reproducibility errors in most areas tested. In particular, for the FA and MD metrics, there was an average reduction of approximately 1% in the reproducibility error. The reproducibility scores did not significantly differ across sites. This study shows that FWE improves sensitivity and is thus promising for clinical applications, with the potential to identify more subtle changes. The increased reproducibility allows for smaller sample size or shorter trials in studies evaluating biomarkers of disease progression or treatment effects. Hum Brain Mapp 38:12-26, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Longitudinal reproducibility of default-mode network connectivity in healthy elderly participants: A multicentric resting-state fMRI study.

To date, limited data are available regarding the inter-site consistency of test-retest reproducibility of functional connectivity measurements, in particular with regard to integrity of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in elderly participants. We implemented a harmonized resting-state fMRI protocol on 13 clinical scanners at 3.0T using vendor-provided sequences. Each site scanned a group of 5 healthy elderly participants twice, at least a week apart. We evaluated inter-site differences and test-retest reproducibility of both temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR) and functional connectivity measurements derived from: i) seed-based analysis (SBA) with seed in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), ii) group independent component analysis (ICA) separately for each site (site ICA), and iii) consortium ICA, with group ICA across the whole consortium. Despite protocol harmonization, significant and quantitatively important inter-site differences remained in the tSNR of resting-state fMRI data; these were plausibly driven by hardware and pulse sequence differences across scanners which could not be harmonized. Nevertheless, the tSNR test-retest reproducibility in the consortium was high (ICC=0.81). The DMN was consistently extracted across all sites and analysis methods. While significant inter-site differences in connectivity scores were found, there were no differences in the associated test-retest error. Overall, ICA measurements were more reliable than PCC-SBA, with site ICA showing higher reproducibility than consortium ICA. Across the DMN nodes, the PCC yielded the most reliable measurements (≈4% test-retest error, ICC=0.85), the medial frontal cortex the least reliable (≈12%, ICC=0.82) and the lateral parietal cortices were in between (site ICA). Altogether these findings support usage of harmonized multisite studies of resting-state functional connectivity to characterize longitudinal effects in studies that assess disease progression and treatment response.

Test-retest reliability of the default mode network in a multi-centric fMRI study of healthy elderly: Effects of data-driven physiological noise correction techniques.

Understanding how to reduce the influence of physiological noise in resting state fMRI data is important for the interpretation of functional brain connectivity. Limited data is currently available to assess the performance of physiological noise correction techniques, in particular when evaluating longitudinal changes in the default mode network (DMN) of healthy elderly participants. In this 3T harmonized multisite fMRI study, we investigated how different retrospective physiological noise correction (rPNC) methods influence the within-site test-retest reliability and the across-site reproducibility consistency of DMN-derived measurements across 13 MRI sites. Elderly participants were scanned twice at least a week apart (five participants per site). The rPNC methods were: none (NPC), Tissue-based regression, PESTICA and FSL-FIX. The DMN at the single subject level was robustly identified using ICA methods in all rPNC conditions. The methods significantly affected the mean z-scores and, albeit less markedly, the cluster-size in the DMN; in particular, FSL-FIX tended to increase the DMN z-scores compared to others. Within-site test-retest reliability was consistent across sites, with no differences across rPNC methods. The absolute percent errors were in the range of 5-11% for DMN z-scores and cluster-size reliability. DMN pattern overlap was in the range 60-65%. In particular, no rPNC method showed a significant reliability improvement relative to NPC. However, FSL-FIX and Tissue-based physiological correction methods showed both similar and significant improvements of reproducibility consistency across the consortium (ICC = 0.67) for the DMN z-scores relative to NPC. Overall these findings support the use of rPNC methods like tissue-based or FSL-FIX to characterize multisite longitudinal changes of intrinsic functional connectivity. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2114-2132, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Robust imaging of hippocampal inner structure at 7T: in vivo acquisition protocol and methodological choices.

OBJECTIVE: Motion-robust multi-slab imaging of hippocampal inner structure in vivo at 7T. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Motion is a crucial issue for ultra-high resolution imaging, such as can be achieved with 7T MRI. An acquisition protocol was designed for imaging hippocampal inner structure at 7T. It relies on a compromise between anatomical details visibility and robustness to motion. In order to reduce acquisition time and motion artifacts, the full slab covering the hippocampus was split into separate slabs with lower acquisition time. A robust registration approach was implemented to combine the acquired slabs within a final 3D-consistent high-resolution slab covering the whole hippocampus. Evaluation was performed on 50 subjects overall, made of three groups of subjects acquired using three acquisition settings; it focused on three issues: visibility of hippocampal inner structure, robustness to motion artifacts and registration procedure performance. RESULTS: Overall, T2-weighted acquisitions with interleaved slabs proved robust. Multi-slab registration yielded high quality datasets in 96 % of the subjects, thus compatible with further analyses of hippocampal inner structure. CONCLUSION: Multi-slab acquisition and registration setting is efficient for reducing acquisition time and consequently motion artifacts for ultra-high resolution imaging of the inner structure of the hippocampus.

Longitudinal reproducibility of automatically segmented hippocampal subfields: A multisite European 3T study on healthy elderly.

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the use of automatically segmented subfields of the human hippocampal formation derived from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, little is known about the test-retest reproducibility of such measures, particularly in the context of multisite studies. Here, we report the reproducibility of automated Freesurfer hippocampal subfields segmentations in 65 healthy elderly enrolled in a consortium of 13 3T MRI sites (five subjects per site). Participants were scanned in two sessions (test and retest) at least one week apart. Each session included two anatomical 3D T1 MRI acquisitions harmonized in the consortium. We evaluated the test-retest reproducibility of subfields segmentation (i) to assess the effects of averaging two within-session T1 images and (ii) to compare subfields with whole hippocampus volume and spatial reliability. We found that within-session averaging of two T1 images significantly improved the reproducibility of all hippocampal subfields but not that of the whole hippocampus. Volumetric and spatial reproducibility across MRI sites were very good for the whole hippocampus, CA2-3, CA4-dentate gyrus (DG), subiculum (reproducibility error∼2% and DICE > 0.90), good for CA1 and presubiculum (reproducibility error ∼ 5% and DICE ∼ 0.90), and poorer for fimbria and hippocampal fissure (reproducibility error ∼ 15% and DICE < 0.80). Spearman's correlations confirmed that test-retest reproducibility improved with volume size. Despite considerable differences of MRI scanner configurations, we found consistent hippocampal subfields volumes estimation. CA2-3, CA4-DG, and sub-CA1 (subiculum, presubiculum, and CA1 pooled together) gave test-retest reproducibility similar to the whole hippocampus. Our findings suggest that the larger hippocampal subfields volume may be reliable longitudinal markers in multisite studies.

Cortico-Cerebellar Monitoring of Speech Sequence Production.

In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we examined speech error monitoring in a cortico-cerebellar network for two contrasts: (a) correct trials with high versus low articulatory error probability and (b) overtly committed errors versus correct trials. Engagement of the cognitive cerebellar region Crus I in both contrasts suggests that this region is involved in overarching performance monitoring. The activation of cerebellar motor regions (superior medial cerebellum, lobules VI and VIII) indicates the additional presence of a sensorimotor driven implementation of control. The combined pattern of pre-supplementary motor area (active across contrasts) and anterior cingulate cortex (only active in the contrast involving overt errors) activations suggests sensorimotor driven feedback monitoring in the medial frontal cortex, making use of proprioception and auditory feedback through overt errors. Differential temporal and parietal cortex activation across contrasts indicates involvement beyond sensorimotor driven feedback in line with speech production models that link these regions to auditory target processing and internal modeling-like mechanisms. These results highlight the presence of multiple, possibly hierarchically interdependent, mechanisms that support the optimizing of speech production.

Planum temporale asymmetry in newborn monkeys predicts the future development of gestural communication's handedness.

The planum temporale (PT), a key language area, is specialized in the left hemisphere in prelinguistic infants and considered as a marker of the pre-wired language-ready brain. However, studies have reported a similar structural PT left-asymmetry not only in various adult non-human primates, but also in newborn baboons. Its shared functional links with language are not fully understood. Here we demonstrate using previously obtained MRI data that early detection of PT left-asymmetry among 27 newborn baboons (Papio anubis, age range of 4 days to 2 months) predicts the future development of right-hand preference for communicative gestures but not for non-communicative actions. Specifically, only newborns with a larger left-than-right PT were more likely to develop a right-handed communication once juvenile, a contralateral brain-gesture link which is maintained in a group of 70 mature baboons. This finding suggests that early PT asymmetry may be a common inherited prewiring of the primate brain for the ontogeny of ancient lateralised properties shared between monkey gesture and human language.

Writing letters in two graphic systems: Behavioral and neural correlates in Latin-Arabic biscripters.

Biscriptuality is the ability to read and write using two scripts. Despite the increasing number of biscripters, this phenomenon remains poorly understood. Here, we focused on investigating graphomotor processing in French-Arabic biscripters. We chose the French and Arabic alphabets because they have comparable visuospatial complexity and linguistic features, but differ dramatically in their graphomotor characteristics. In a first experiment we describe the graphomotor features of the two alphabets and showed that while Arabic and Latin letters are produced with the same velocity and fluency, Arabic letters require more pen lifts, contain more right-to-left strokes and clockwise curves, and take longer to write than Latin letters. These results suggest that Arabic and Latin letters are produced via different motor patterns. In a second experiment we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to ask whether writing the two scripts relies upon partially distinct or fully overlapping neural networks, and whether the elements of the previously described handwriting network are recruited to the same extent by the two scripts. We found that both scripts engaged the so-called "writing network", but that within the network, Arabic letters recruited the left superior parietal lobule (SPL) and the left primary motor cortex (M1) more strongly than Latin letters. Both regions have previously been identified as holding scale-invariant representations of letter trajectories. Arabic and Latin letters also activated distinct regions that do not belong to the writing network. Complementary analyses indicate that the differences observed between scripts at the neural level could be driven by the specific graphomotor features of each script. Overall, our results indicate that particular features of the practiced scripts can lead to different motor organization at both the behavioral and brain levels in biscripters.

Planum temporale grey matter volume asymmetries in newborn monkeys (Papio anubis).

The Planum temporale (PT) is one of the key hubs of the language network in the human brain. The gross asymmetry of this perisylvian region toward the left brain was considered as the most emblematic marker of hemispheric specialization of language processes in the brain. Interestingly, this neuroanatomical signature was documented also in newborn infants and preterms, suggesting the early brain's readiness for language acquisition. Nevertheless, this latter interpretation was questioned by a recent report in non-human primates of a potential similar signature in newborn baboons Papio anubis based on PT surface measures. Whether this "tip of the iceberg" PT asymmetry is actually reflecting asymmetry of its underlying grey matter volume remains unclear but critical to investigate potential continuities of cortical specialization with human infants. Here we report a population-level leftward asymmetry of the PT grey matter volume in in vivo 34 newborn baboons P. anubis, which showed intra-individual positive correlation with PT surface's asymmetry measures but also a more pronounced degree of leftward asymmetry at the population level. This finding demonstrates that PT leftward structural asymmetry in this Old World monkey species is a robust phenomenon in early primate development, which clearly speaks for a continuity with early human brain specialization. Results also strengthen the hypothesis that early PT asymmetry might be not a human-specific marker for the pre-wired language-ready brain in infants.

Graph theoretical analysis reveals the functional role of the left ventral occipito-temporal cortex in speech processing.

The left ventral occipito-temporal cortex (left-vOT) plays a key role in reading. Interestingly, the area also responds to speech input, suggesting that it may have other functions beyond written word recognition. Here, we adopt graph theoretical analysis to investigate the left-vOT's functional role in the whole-brain network while participants process spoken sentences in different contexts. Overall, different connectivity measures indicate that the left-vOT acts as an interface enabling the communication between distributed brain regions and sub-networks. During simple speech perception, the left-vOT is systematically part of the visual network and contributes to the communication between neighboring areas, remote areas, and sub-networks, by acting as a local bridge, a global bridge, and a connector, respectively. However, when speech comprehension is explicitly required, the specific functional role of the area and the sub-network to which the left-vOT belongs change and vary with the quality of speech signal and task difficulty. These connectivity patterns provide insightful information on the contribution of the left-vOT in various contexts of language processing beyond its role in reading. They advance our general understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the flexibility of the language network that adjusts itself according to the processing context.

Functionally homologous representation of vocalizations in the auditory cortex of humans and macaques.

How the evolution of speech has transformed the human auditory cortex compared to other primates remains largely unknown. While primary auditory cortex is organized largely similarly in humans and macaques,1 the picture is much less clear at higher levels of the anterior auditory pathway,2 particularly regarding the processing of conspecific vocalizations (CVs). A "voice region" similar to the human voice-selective areas3,4 has been identified in the macaque right anterior temporal lobe with functional MRI;5 however, its anatomical localization, seemingly inconsistent with that of the human temporal voice areas (TVAs), has suggested a "repositioning of the voice area" in recent human evolution.6 Here we report a functional homology in the cerebral processing of vocalizations by macaques and humans, using comparative fMRI and a condition-rich auditory stimulation paradigm. We find that the anterior temporal lobe of both species possesses cortical voice areas that are bilateral and not only prefer conspecific vocalizations but also implement a representational geometry categorizing them apart from all other sounds in a species-specific but homologous manner. These results reveal a more similar functional organization of higher-level auditory cortex in macaques and humans than currently known.