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Published February 2000 | public
Journal Article

Saccade-Related Activity in the Parietal Reach Region

Abstract

In previous experiments, we showed that cells in the parietal reach region (PRR) in monkey posterior parietal cortex code intended reaching movements in an eye-centered frame of reference. These cells are more active when an arm compared with an eye movement is being planned. Despite this clear preference for arm movements, we now report that PRR neurons also fire around the time of a saccade. Of 206 cells tested, 29% had perisaccadic activity in a delayed-saccade task. Two findings indicate that saccade-related activity does not reflect saccade planning or execution. First, activity is often peri- or postsaccadic but seldom presaccadic. Second, cells with saccade-related activity were no more likely to show strong saccadic delay period activity than cells without saccade-related activity. These findings indicate that PRR cells do not take part in saccade planning. Instead, the saccade-related activity in PRR may reflect cross-coupling between reach and saccade pathways that may be used to facilitate eye-hand coordination. Alternatively, saccade-related activity may reflect eye position information that could be used to maintain an eye-centered representation of intended reach targets across eye movements.

Additional Information

© 2000 The American Physiological Society. Received 7 June 1999; Accepted 7 October 1999; Published online 1 February 2000; Published in print 1 February 2000. We thank B. Gillikan for technical assistance and J. Calton for comments on an earlier draft. This work was supported by National Eye Institute Grant EY-05522, the Della Martin Foundation, and the Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. The article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 19, 2023