Visual, delay, and oculomotor timing and tuning in macaque dorsal pulvinar during instructed and free choice memory saccades.
Cereb Cortex
; 33(21): 10877-10900, 2023 10 14.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37724430
ABSTRACT
Causal perturbations suggest that primate dorsal pulvinar plays a crucial role in target selection and saccade planning, though its basic neuronal properties remain unclear. Some functional aspects of dorsal pulvinar and interconnected frontoparietal areas-e.g. ipsilesional choice bias after inactivation-are similar. But it is unknown if dorsal pulvinar shares oculomotor properties of cortical circuitry, in particular delay and choice-related activity. We investigated such properties in macaque dorsal pulvinar during instructed and free-choice memory saccades. Most recorded units showed visual (12%), saccade-related (30%), or both types of responses (22%). Visual responses were primarily contralateral; diverse saccade-related responses were predominantly post-saccadic with a weak contralateral bias. Memory delay and pre-saccadic enhancement was infrequent (11-9%)-instead, activity was often suppressed during saccade planning (25%) and further during execution (15%). Surprisingly, only few units exhibited classical visuomotor patterns combining cue and continuous delay activity or pre-saccadic ramping; moreover, most spatially-selective neurons did not encode the upcoming decision during free-choice delay. Thus, in absence of a visible goal, the dorsal pulvinar has a limited role in prospective saccade planning, with patterns partially complementing its frontoparietal partners. Conversely, prevalent visual and post-saccadic responses imply its participation in integrating spatial goals with processing across saccades.
Key words
Full text:
1
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Saccades
/
Pulvinar
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Cereb Cortex
Journal subject:
CEREBRO
Year:
2023
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Germany