Grant Number: 5R01EY008890-16
Project Title: SACCADE TARGET SELECTION-FRONTAL CORTEX
PI Information: PROFESSOR JEFFREY D. SCHALL, [email protected] 

Abstract: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):
The long-term goal of our research is to understand how the visual system decides where to look. The activity of multiple neurons will be monitored simultaneously in monkeys performing visual search tasks designed to dissociate visual processing from saccade preparation. The frontal eye field will be studied because it is situated anatomically to sample the outcome of visual processing to orient attention and produce motor commands to orient gaze. Patterns of neural activity will be analyzed to evaluate specific hypotheses about how visual information is encoded for target selection among pools of neurons (Aim 1), to describe how sensory-motor mapping occurs between visual and saccade neurons (Aim 2) and to determine how short-term and long-term experience influences saccade target selection (Aim 3). Understanding how the brain selects visual stimuli for action is necessary to understand the causes of impaired visual behavior.

Thesaurus Terms:
brain electrical activity, frontal lobe /cortex, neural information processing, saccade, visual cortex, visual tracking experience, neuron, neurophysiology, visual field, visual perception, visual stimulus Macaca mulatta, single cell analysis
 
Institution: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
Medical Center, NASHVILLE, TN 372036869
Fiscal Year: 2006
Department: PSYCHOLOGY
Project Start: 01-JAN-1991
Project End: 31-MAY-2010
ICD: NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE
IRG: CVP

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.