Neuronal switching of sensorimotor transformations for antisaccades

Mingsha Zhang and Shabtai Barash ()
Additional contact information
Mingsha Zhang: Weizmann Institute of Science
Shabtai Barash: Weizmann Institute of Science

Nature, 2000, vol. 408, issue 6815, 971-975

Abstract: Abstract The influence of cognitive context on orienting behaviour can be explored using the mixed memory-prosaccade, memory-antisaccade task. A symbolic cue, such as the colour of a visual stimulus, instructs the subject to make a brief, rapid eye movement (a saccade) either towards the stimulus (prosaccade) or in the opposite direction (antisaccade)1,2,3. Thus, the appropriate sensorimotor transformation must be switched on to execute the instructed task. Despite advances in our understanding of the neuronal processing of antisaccades4,5,6,7,8, it remains unclear how the brain selects and computes the sensorimotor transformation leading to an antisaccade. Here we show that area LIP of the posterior parietal cortex is involved in these processes. LIP's population activity turns from the visual direction to the motor direction during memory-antisaccade trials. About one-third of the visual neurons in LIP produce a brisk, transient discharge in certain memory-antisaccade trials. We call this discharge ‘paradoxical’ because its timing is visual-like but its direction is motor. The paradoxical discharge shows, first, that switching occurs already at the level of visual cells, as previously proposed by Schlag-Rey and colleagues5; and second, that this switching is accomplished very rapidly, within 50 ms from the arrival of the visual signals in LIP.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35050097 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:408:y:2000:i:6815:d:10.1038_35050097

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35050097

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().