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Neuronal switching of sensorimotor transformations for antisaccades

Nature volume 408, pages 971–975 (2000)Cite this article

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.

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Figure 1: Cartoons of involved operations, hypotheses and task details.
Figure 2: Responses of single PPC neurons.
Figure 3: Mean differential activity for all 400 units studied. (Summed DA divided by number of units.) The DA is plotted in black.
Figure 4: Illustration of the paradoxical activity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank E. Ahissar for his involvement, and A. Melikyan and X. Wang for participation in some experiments. We thank M. Glickstein, P. Thier, E. Seidemann, Y. Ritov and M. Tsodyks for discussions and for reading the manuscript. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, and by the Murray H. and Meyer Grodetsky Center for Research of Higher Brain Functions and the Einhorn-Dominic Institute of Brain Research at the Weizmann Institute, and by the Paul Godfrey Research Foundation.

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  1. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

    Mingsha Zhang & Shabtai Barash

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Correspondence to Shabtai Barash.

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Zhang, M., Barash, S. Neuronal switching of sensorimotor transformations for antisaccades. Nature 408, 971–975 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35050097

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