title: Transition of target-location signaling in activity of macaque lateral intraparietal neurons during delayed-response visual search.
abstract: Neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) are involved in signaling the location of behaviorally relevant objects during visual discrimination and working memory maintenance. Although previous studies have examined these cognitive processes separately, they often appear as inseparable sequential processes in real-life situations. Little is known about how the neural representation of the target location is altered when both cognitive processes are continuously required for executing a task. We investigated this issue by recording single-unit activity from LIP of monkeys performing a delayed-response visual search task in which they were required to discriminate the target from distractors in the stimulus period, remember the location at which the extinguished target had been presented in the delay period, and make a saccade to that location in the response period. Target-location signaling was assessed using response modulations contingent on whether the target location was inside or opposite the receptive field. Although the population-averaged response modulation was consistent and changed only slightly during a trial, the across-neuron pattern of response modulations showed a marked and abrupt change around 170 ms after stimulus offset due to concurrent changes in the response modulations of a subset of LIP neurons, which manifested heterogeneous patterns of activity changes during the task. Our findings suggest that target-location signaling by the across-neuron pattern of LIP activity discretely changes after the stimulus disappearance under conditions that continuously require visual discrimination and working memory to perform a single behavioral task.
authors: Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan; and Department of Integrative Brain Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan nishida.satoshi.6m@kyoto-u.ac.jp.
authors: Satoshi
authors: S
authors: Nishida
authors: Department of Integrative Brain Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
authors: Tomohiro
authors: T
authors: Tanaka
authors: Department of Integrative Brain Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
authors: Tadashi
authors: T
authors: Ogawa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual; D005260:Female; D008251:Macaca; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: lateral intraparietal area; nonhuman primate; saccade; visual search; working memory