Integration of Audiovisual Motion in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortical Neurons

Abstract

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is well recognized for its role in cognitive functions and activating action plans. In contrast, the properties of prefrontal neurons with respect to multisensory processing are less well studied. To address this question, we recorded single units from areas 8a and 46 of two female rhesus macaques while they were presented with visual, auditory, and audiovisual motion stimuli. The majority of dorsolateral prefrontal neurons responded to these sensory stimuli, with similar percentages of auditory-only, visual-only and audiovisual neurons. Approximately one third of responsive neurons exhibited significant super- or sub-additive interactions in response to the pairing of auditory and visual stimuli, revealing significant nonlinearities in their response profiles. Decoding motion signals from the population activity robustly differentiated multisensory from unisensory trials and also unisensory auditory and visual trials from each other. These results demonstrate that dorsolateral prefrontal neurons integrate auditory and visual motion signals, extending multisensory computations beyond sensory cortices into prefrontal circuits that support higher-order cognition. New & NoteworthyWe recorded single neurons in macaque dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during visual, auditory, and audiovisual motion. Nearly half of responsive neurons were multisensory and a third displayed significant super- or sub-additive interactions, while ensemble activity reliably decoded stimulus modality. These findings provide the strongest evidence to date that DLPFC performs rapid, nonlinear audiovisual integration, extending multisensory computations beyond classical posterior regions into the prefrontal circuits that support cognition.