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Visual processing

An organizing wave?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 16, pages 122–123 (2015)Cite this article

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Saccades are quick movements of the eye that enable primates to fixate the high-resolution part of their retina on an object of interest. Given that the periods of saccadic eye movements are associated with low visual sensitivity, the visual system has to take in visual information rapidly — through the integration of visual and oculomotor signals — in the inter-saccade periods. Zanos et al. examined the possibility that, during these periods, travelling waves of neural activity might somehow be involved in the reorganization of spatiotemporal visual information.

Area V4 harbours neurons that respond to specific aspects of visual stimuli and is retinotopically organized so that it maps the contralateral visual hemifield. The authors tested their hypothesis by recording local field potentials (LFPs) and spikes in part of this cortical area via multielectrode arrays while the monkeys performed an eye movement task. In the task, the monkeys were presented with a visual stimulus that changed location, triggering the animals to make saccades to or away from the area of visual space (the 'target area') corresponding to the part of V4 that was covered by the arrays.

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References

  1. Zanos, T. P. et al. A sensorimotor role for traveling waves in primate visual cortex. Neuron http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.12.043 (2015)

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Authors
  1. Darran Yates
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Yates, D. An organizing wave?. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 122–123 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3923

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