TY - JOUR T1 - Chronometry on Spike-LFP Responses Reveals the Functional Neural Circuitry of Early Auditory Cortex Underlying Sound Processing and Discrimination JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0420-17.2018 SP - ENEURO.0420-17.2018 AU - Arpan Banerjee AU - Yukiko Kikuchi AU - Mortimer Mishkin AU - Josef P. Rauschecker AU - Barry Horwitz Y1 - 2018/06/06 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2018/06/06/ENEURO.0420-17.2018.abstract N2 - Animals and humans rapidly detect specific features of sounds, but the time courses of the underlying neural response for different stimulus categories is largely unknown. Furthermore, the intricate functional organization of auditory information processing pathways is poorly understood. Here, we computed neuronal response latencies from simultaneously recorded spike trains and local field potentials (LFPs) along the first two stages of cortical sound processing, primary auditory cortex (A1) and lateral belt (LB), of awake, behaving macaques. Two types of response latencies were measured for spike trains as well as LFPs: 1) Onset latency, time-locked to onset of external auditory stimuli, and 2) selection latency, time taken from stimulus onset to a selective response to a specific stimulus category. Trial-by-trial LFP onset latencies predominantly reflecting synaptic input arrival typically preceded spike onset latencies, assumed to be representative of neuronal output indicating that both areas may receive input environmental signals and relay the information to the next stage. In A1, simple sounds, such as pure tones, yielded shorter spike onset latencies compared to complex sounds, such as monkey vocalizations (‘coos’). This trend was reversed in LB, indicating a hierarchical functional organization of auditory cortex in the macaque. LFP selection latencies in A1 were always shorter than those in LB for both PT and Coo reflecting the serial arrival of stimulus-specific information in these areas. Thus, chronometry on spike-LFP signals revealed some of the effective neural circuitry underlying complex sound discrimination.Significance Statement Auditory core (A1) and lateral belt (LB) areas are key subdivisions of auditory cortex. A1 plays crucial role in processing of simple stimuli such as pure tones whereas LB for processing of complex sounds. Both areas receive direct inputs from medial geniculate nucleus and have recurrent connections. Nonetheless, the functional connectivity patterns between these subdivisions while processing different sound categories are poorly understood. Using simultaneous spike-LFP recordings our study reveals that information about the presence of a stimuli in the environment arrive concurrently in core and LB, however the information related to neuronal discrimination may arrive at different times indicating both parallel and serial information transmission pathways exist and their presence is guided by the context of the task. ER -