# Audiovisual Integration in the Prefrontal Cortex

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER · 2024 · $475,934

## Abstract

Social communication depends on the integration of sensory, emotional and cognitive information by a large
network of brain regions. While many brain regions integrate auditory and visual information, the inferior frontal
lobes (IFG) receive a wealth of sensory afferents from multiple modalities, has influence over many brain
regions involved in motor and cognitive processes, and plays a major role in our speech and language
processes. Previous investigations in primate ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), a proposed homologue
of human IFG, revealed that neurons are selectively responsive to species-specific faces and to vocalizations
and perform complex integration of these communication stimuli. Furthermore, VLPFC is essential during
crossmodal working memory. These varied functions of VLPFC occur over several cytoarchitectonic regions,
each of which receives different anatomical afferents and demonstrates diverse sensory and cognitive
responses. Inability to integrate face and vocal information impairs speech processing, language learning,
recognition and semantic processing, all essential elements of social communication that VLPFC participates
in. Hence, identifying the integrative and cellular functions of VLPFC subdivisions will clarify the organization of
the primate frontal lobe and its role in disorders of communication. In this proposal, we will determine what
components of face and vocal information are integrated within VLPFC subregions and what neural
mechanism underlie integration in these subregions. In Aim 1, we will investigate which features of face and
vocal information are integrated and whether subregions of VLPFC process and integrate these stimuli
differently (i.e. What is integrated Where). We hypothesize that modality specific subregions of VLFPC will
show differential responses to manipulations of spectrotemporal features of face and vocal stimuli. In Aim 2,
we will interrogate how face and vocal stimuli are integrated by single neurons and across simultaneously
recorded ensembles during the presentation of dynamic naturalistic audiovisual stimuli. In particular we will
determine if VLPFC neurons perform time division multiplexing, where the neural response to face-vocalization
movie shows evidence of “switching” back and forth between neural representations of the face or the vocal
stimulus during integration. Furthermore we will degrade the face and vocal stimuli in an audiovisual pair in
order to selectively diminish the contribution of the face or the vocal stimuli during integration and to determine
how this affects our temporal model of these responses. Merging ensemble recordings of responses to
naturalistic stimuli in the prefrontal cortex of Old World Primates with novel computational methods, will provide
new and valuable data on how we combine social communication information. This is of particular relevance to
understanding changes in sensory integration in intellectual disabilities such as autism spectr...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10792645
- **Project number:** 5R01DC004845-22
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** LIZABETH M ROMANSKI
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $475,934
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2001-04-01 → 2028-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10792645

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10792645, Audiovisual Integration in the Prefrontal Cortex (5R01DC004845-22). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10792645. Licensed CC0.

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