The vocal behavior of macaque monkeys has been studied extensively in both field and laboratory settings. To date, however, no investigation has systematically examined the neural mechanisms underlying species-specific recognition of their vocalizations. To bridge this gap, we are investigating the auditory representation of conspecific vocalizations in the neocortex of behaving rhesus monkeys. Subjects performed a simple auditory detection task during which, on each trial, they listened to a conspecific vocalization followed by a non-vocal, target sound. The stimulus set consisted of call types familiar to our captive-bred subjects but from unknown individuals: three exemplars from each of 7 call categories. Our preliminary investigation using these natural stimuli (Ghazanfar et al, SFN 2002) revealed that ~45% of auditory belt cortical multi-units were selective for 1 or 2 call categories. This suggests that the macaque auditory cortex is specialized to process communication sounds. To assess the degree ...