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Published December 7, 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Different Representations of Potential and Selected Motor Plans by Distinct Parietal Areas

Abstract

Traditional theories have considered decision making as a separate neural process occurring before action planning. However, recent neurophysiological studies of spatial target selection have suggested that decision making and motor planning may be performed in an integrated manner. It was proposed that multiple potential plans are concurrently formed and the ultimately selected action simultaneously emerges within the same circuits (Shadlen and Newsome, 2001; Cisek and Kalaska, 2010). In the present study, we recorded from the parietal reach region (PRR) and dorsal area 5 (area 5d) in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) while monkeys performed a nonspatial effector (saccade vs reach) choice task. The results show that PRR encodes potential and selected reach plans whereas area 5d encodes only selected reach plans, suggesting a serial visuomotor cortical circuitry for nonspatial effector decisions. Thus, there appears to be a different flow of processing for decisions and planning for spatial target selection, which is more integrated, and nonspatial effector decisions between eye and limb movements, which are more serial.

Additional Information

© 2011 the authors. Received Nov. 30, 2010; revised Oct. 5, 2011; accepted Oct. 31, 2011. This work was supported by the National Eye Institute and the James G. Boswell Foundation to R.A.A., and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the Whitehall Foundation to H.C. We thank D. Baldauf, E. Hwang, and G. Mulliken for helpful discussion during the course of this study; I. Kagan for help with MRI; K. Pejsa, and N. Sammons for help with animal handling and training; J. Baer and C. Lindsell for veterinary assistance; V. Shcherbatyuk for computer support; and T. Yao for administrative support. Author contributions: H.C. and R.A.A. designed research; H.C. performed research; H.C. analyzed data; H.C. and R.A.A. wrote the paper.

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