Good vibrations.
How and where the brain forms associations between sensation and action are crucial questions in the field of cognitive neuroscience. In this issue of Neuron, add to an already impressive body of work elucidating the neural mechanisms responsible for forming categorical decisions about vibrotactile stimuli that guide behavior. Here they show that single neurons in premotor cortex represent, remarkably, what appears to be the entire temporal evolution of the decision process-from representation of the sensory stimulus, to formation of the discrimination, to the choice of behavioral output.
Gold
Joshua I
JI
Department of Physiology and Biophysics and Regional Primate Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
D002755:Choice Behavior; D006801:Humans; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014732:Vibration