MAY THE WARNING AUDITORY-VISUAL NEURONS HELP THE MONKEY TO PLAY THE PIANO?

Aim: In previous reports, we showed the involvement of PEEF (area 8B) neurons in auditory information processing and in ear and eye orienting behaviour. For what concerns auditory cells, we observed, by unit activity recording, that their activity was related to complex environmental auditory stimuli but not to pure tones. Our question was: if we train intensively a monkey, much more than previous animals, to receive the reward only after having listened to a particular note, may the monkey's neurons discriminate different notes?Methods: For this aim, we trained intensively a Macaque monkey to receive some drops of fruit juice only after having listened to a particular note (FA), while it did not receive the reward after the presentation of a different note (DO). Moreover, during the experiments also the note SOL was presented without reward. The animal was also trained for a classic visual fixation task.Results: We recorded two types of cells: a) classic auditory environmental neurons and b) neurons that discharged for FA and SOL notes but not for DO note. The discharge was brisk for the FA note, it was less intensive with a rapid adaptation for the SOL note and very weak for the DO note. In addition the discharge was scarce for the clik of the pump, and active during visual fixation task before the clik of the pump.Conclusion: Present data confirm the role of the PEEF in auditory-visual integration and expand the vision of this field. The presence of cross modal neurons (auditory-visual) and the ability to discriminate between different notes suggest to speculate that this field may be involved in music learning.