Rhesus monkeys’ behavioral and neuronal responses to voices and faces of known individuals
type: Dataset
description: Humans can individually recognize some hundreds of persons and therefore operate within a rich and complex society. Individual recognition can be achieved by identifying distinct elements such as the face or voice as belonging to one individual. In humans, those different cues are linked into one conceptual representation of individual identity. I demonstrated that rhesus monkeys, like humans, recognize familiarpeers but also familiar humans individually and that they match their voice to their corresponding memorized face. Thus it shows that fine individual recognition is a skill shared across a range of primate species, which may serve as the basis of a sophisticated social network. It also suggests that animals’ brains flexibly adapt to recognize individuals of other species when socio-ecologically relevant. Following at the neuronal level, this project put in light that social knowledge about other individuals is represented by hippocampal neurons as well as by inferotemporal neurons. For instance I observed the existence of face preferring neurons not only in the inferotemporal cortex as previously described but also in the hippocampus. Comparison of their properties across both structures, suggests that they could play complementary roles in recognition of individuals. Finally, because the hippocampus is a structure that evolved in various degrees to support autobiographical memory and spatial information in different mammals, I characterized the different subtypes of neurons and their network connectivity in the monkey hippocampus to provide a common anatomical framework to discuss hippocampal functions across species
identifier: NNT: 2012LYO10011
issued: 2026-05-05T14:27:46.756559
language: fr
modified: 2026-05-05T14:27:46.756565
contact point: Organization
  fn: CCSD
keyword: caracterisation-cellulaire
keyword: cells-characterization
keyword: faces
keyword: hippocampe
keyword: hippocampus
keyword: individual-recognition
keyword: infoeu-reposemanticsdoctoralthesis
keyword: macaca-mulatta
keyword: neurophysiologie
keyword: neurophysiology
keyword: primate
keyword: reconnaissance-individuelle
keyword: scconeurcognitive-scienceneuroscience
keyword: theses
keyword: visages
keyword: voice
keyword: voix
landing page: https://theses.hal.science/tel-00979701

Rhesus monkeys’ behavioral and neuronal responses to voices and faces of known individuals
type: Distribution
format: HTML
issued: 2026-05-05T14:27:46.768603
modified: 2026-05-05T14:27:46.738864
access URL: https://theses.hal.science/tel-00979701

test_moissonnage_selune
type: Agent