Local homogeneity of tonotopic organization in the primary auditory cortex of marmosets

Abstract

Marmoset has emerged as a useful nonhuman primate species for studying brain structure and function. Previous studies on the mouse primary auditory cortex (A1) showed that neurons with preferential frequency-tuning responses are mixed within local cortical regions, despite a large-scale tonotopic organization. Here we found that frequency-tuning properties of marmoset A1 neurons are highly uniform within local cortical regions. We first defined the tonotopic map of A1 using intrinsic optical imaging and then used in vivo two-photon calcium imaging of large neuronal populations to examine the tonotopic preference at the single-cell level. We found that tuning preferences of layer 2/3 neurons were highly homogeneous over hundreds of micrometers in both horizontal and vertical directions. Thus, marmoset A1 neurons are distributed in a tonotopic manner at both macro- and microscopic levels. Such organization is likely to be important for the organization of auditory circuits in the primate brain.