Elsevier

Brain and Language

Volume 36, Issue 2, February 1989, Pages 275-285
Brain and Language

Cortical deafness cannot account for the inability of Japanese macaques to discriminate species-specific vocalizations

https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(89)90065-5Get rights and content

Abstract

Bilateral ablation of the superior temporal gyrus in Japanese macaques results in a significant hearing loss (cortical deafness) as well as in an inability to discriminate between two types of their “coo” vocalizations. A two-part investigation was conducted to determine whether the hearing loss may itself affect the ability to discriminate vocalizations. First, four normal Japanese macaques were tested for their ability to discriminate coos which were filtered to simulate the effect of a cortical hearing loss. Second, four Japanese macaques with bilateral superior temporal gyrus lesions were tested for their ability to discriminate coos which were amplified and equalized to compensate for each animal's hearing loss. All four normal macaques were able to discriminate the filtered coos easily whereas compensating for the operated monkeys' hearing losses did not improve their performances. It appears that the inability of monkeys with bilateral superior temporal gyrus lesions to discriminate conspecific vocalizations is not simply due to the accompanying hearing loss, but is a separate auditory disorder.

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      Such experiments have found that bilateral AC lesions resulted in significant elevations in the threshold for detecting the presence of gaps and sinusoidal amplitude modulation in noise sounds [1–3]. Also, the animals after bilateral ablations of AC were impaired in the discrimination of complex sounds, such as frequency patterns [4], frequency-modulated sounds [5,6], vowel-like stimuli [7], consonant–vowel–consonant sounds [8] and animal vocalizations [9–11]. These reported deficits had recovered little even after over a month.

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      Bilateral auditory cortex lesions cause long-lasting impairments in the discrimination of complex sounds. Lesioned animals are impaired in the discrimination of frequency patterns [3], vowel-like stimuli [4], and animal vocalizations [5–7], with little recovery even a month later. Japanese macaques are unable to discriminate between coo vocalizations even years after receiving bilateral auditory cortex lesions [7].

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    This research was supported by NIH Grants NS 12992 and HD 02528 to the Bureau of Child Research, University of Kansas.

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