1st Edition

Primate Audition Ethology and Neurobiology

Edited By Asif A. Ghazanfar Copyright 2002
    336 Pages 5 Color & 52 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    Like speech, the species-specific vocalizations or calls of non-human primates mediate social interactions, convey important emotional information, and in some cases refer to objects and events in the caller's environment. These functional similarities suggest that the selective pressures which shaped primate vocal communication are similar to those that influenced the evolution of human speech. As such, investigating the perception and production of vocalizations in extant non-human primates provides one avenue for understanding the neural mechanisms of speech and for illuminating the substrates underlying the evolution of human language.

    Primate Audition: Ethology and Neurobiology is the first book to bridge the epistemological gap between primate ethologists and auditory neurobiologists. It brings together the knowledge of world experts on different aspects of primate auditory function. Leading ethologists, comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists who have developed new experimental approaches apply their methods to a variety of issues dealing with primate vocal behavior and the neurobiology of the primate auditory system.

    With the advent of new signal processing techniques and the exponential growth in our knowledge of primate behavior, the time has arrived for a neurobiological investigation of the primate auditory system based on principles derived from ethology. The synthesis of ethological and neurobiological approaches to primate vocal behavior presented in Primate Audition: Ethology and Neurobiology is likely to yield the richest understanding of the acoustic and neural bases of primate audition and possibly shed light on the evolutionary precursors to speech.

    Primates as Auditory Specialists, Asif A. Ghazanfar and Laurie R. Santos
    Causal Knowledge in Free-Ranging Diana Monkeys, Klaus Zuberbühler
    Auditory Temporal Integration in Primates: A Comparative Analysis, Kevin N. O'Connor, and Mitchell L. Sutter
    Mechanisms of Acoustic Perception in the Cotton-Top Tamarin, Cory T. Miller, Daniel J. Weiss, and Marc D. Hauser
    Psychophysical and Perceptual Studies of Primate Communication Calls, Colleen G. Le Prell and David B. Moody
    Primate Vocal Production and Its Implications for Auditory Research, W. Tecumseh S. Fitch
    Developmental Modifications in the Vocal Behavior of Non-Human Primates, Julia Fischer
    Ecological and Physiological Constraints for Primate Vocal Communication, Charles H. Brown
    Neural Representation of Sound Patterns in the Auditory Cortex of Monkeys, Michael Brosch and Henning Scheich
    Representation of Sound Location in the Primate Brain, Kristin A. Kelly, Ryan Metzger, O'Dhaniel Mullette-Gillman, Uri Werner-Reiss, and Jennifer M. Groh
    The Comparative Anatomy of the Primate Auditory Cortex, Troy A. Hackett
    Auditory Communication and Central Auditory Mechanisms in the Squirrel Monkey: Past and Present, John D. Newman
    Cortical Mechanisms of Sound Localization and Plasticity in Primates, Gregg H. Recanzone
    Anatomy and Physiology of Auditory-Prefrontal Interactions in Non-Human Primates, Lizabeth M. Romanski
    Cortical Processing of Complex Sounds and Species-Specific Vocalizations in the Marmoset Monkey (Callithrix jacchus), Xiaoqin Wang, Siddhartha Kadia, Thomas Lu, Li Liang, and James Agamaite

    Biography

    Asif A. Ghazanfar