Different representations of potential and selected motor plans by distinct parietal areas

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of neuroscience 2011-12, Vol.31 (49), p.18130-18136
Main Authors: Cui, He, Andersen, Richard A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action Potentials - physiology
Animals
Choice Behavior - physiology
Macaca mulatta
Male
Movement - physiology
Neurons - physiology
Parietal Lobe - anatomy & histology
Parietal Lobe - cytology
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Saccades - physiology
Time Factors
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/jneurosci.6247-10.2011