Grant Number: 5R01MH055806-10
Project Title: NEURAL CONTROL OF VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT
PI Information: PROFESSOR JEFFREY D. SCHALL, [email protected]

Abstract:
The long-term goal of our research is to understand how the brain controls and monitors the actions it produces. The activity of ensembles of neurons will be monitored in monkeys performing countermanding (stopping) tasks. Experiments will manipulate the properties and context of the stop signal. The frontal eye field will be studied to further elucidate the neural activity that species whether and when a movement will occur. The supplementary eye field and anterior cingulate cortex will be studied to characterize the neural concomitants of supervisory control signals. Patterns of ensemble neural activity will be analyzed to evaluate specific hypothesis about how the brain prepares and initiates movements (Aim 1), monitors the consequences of movements (Aim 2) and generates supervisory control signals (Aim 3). Understanding how the brain control normal action in necessary to understand the causes of dyscontrol underlying various psychopathologies.

Thesaurus Terms:
brain electrical activity, eye movement, neural information processing, neuroregulation, sensory signal detection, visual field action potential, cingulate gyrus, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, operant conditioning, psychomotor reaction time, reinforcer, saccade, smooth pursuit eye movement, visual fixation, visual pathway, visual stimulus, visual threshold Macaca, histology, magnetic resonance imaging, single cell analysis, tissue /cell preparation

Institution: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Medical Center, NASHVILLE, TN 372036869
Fiscal Year: 2006
Department: PSYCHOLOGY
Project Start: 01-JUN-1996
Project End: 30-APR-2007
ICD: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
IRG: IFCN 

J Neurophysiol 66: 530-558, 1991

Neuronal activity related to visually guided saccadic eye movements in the supplementary motor area of rhesus monkeys

J. D. Schall
 
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139

Task
By the use of operant conditioning techniques, the monkeys were trained to perform a fo/no-go visual tracking task. The monkeys were water deprived in their home cage and were rewarded with apple juice. The animals’ fluid intake was closely monitored; if on any day they did not perform the task until satiated, supplemental fluid was given.

Surgery
All surgical procedures were accomplished with the animal under barbiturate anesthesia (pentobarbital sodium, 30 mg/kg) and with the use of sterile surgical techniques. Initially, a scleral search coil was implanted suconjunctivally and a stainless steel post to restrain the head was attached to the skull with acrylic cement. Once the task was mastered to a criterion of 90% correct, a recording chamber was implanted over a midline craniotomy that exposed SMA.