title: Planning Movements in Visual and Physical Space in Monkey Posterior Parietal Cortex.
abstract: Neurons in the posterior parietal cortex respond selectively for spatial parameters of planned goal-directed movements. Yet, it is still unclear which aspects of the movement the neurons encode: the spatial parameters of the upcoming physical movement (physical goal), or the upcoming visual limb movement (visual goal). To test this, we recorded neuronal activity from the parietal reach region while monkeys planned reaches under either normal or prism-reversed viewing conditions. We found predominant encoding of physical goals while fewer neurons were selective for visual goals during planning. In contrast, local field potentials recorded in the same brain region exhibited predominant visual goal encoding, similar to previous imaging data from humans. The visual goal encoding in individual neurons was neither related to immediate visual input nor to visual memory, but to the future visual movement. Our finding suggests that action planning in parietal cortex is not exclusively a precursor of impending physical movements, as reflected by the predominant physical goal encoding, but also contains spatial kinematic parameters of upcoming visual movement, as reflected by co-existing visual goal encoding in neuronal spiking. The co-existence of visual and physical goals adds a complementary perspective to the current understanding of parietal spatial computations in primates.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Shenbing
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuang
authors.affiliation: German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Morel
authors.affiliation: German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gail
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements; D025461:Feedback, Physiological; D006040:Goals; D000882:Haplorhini; D033182:Intention; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: action planning; anti-reach; physical goal; posterior parietal cortex; reversing-prism; visual goal