scholarly journals Contrasting the roles of the supplementary and frontal eye fields in ocular decision making

2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (12) ◽  
pp. 2644-2655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun-nan Yang ◽  
Stephen Heinen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Delay Period ◽  
Neuron Activity ◽  
Frontal Eye Field ◽  
Unit Recording ◽  
Task Rule ◽  
Supplementary Eye Field ◽  
Eye Field ◽  
Single Neuron Activity

Single-unit recording in monkeys and functional imaging of the human frontal lobe indicate that the supplementary eye field (SEF) and the frontal eye field (FEF) are involved in ocular decision making. To test whether these structures have distinct roles in decision making, single-neuron activity was recorded from each structure while monkeys executed an ocular go/nogo task. The task rule is to pursue a moving target if it intersects a visible square or “go zone.” We found that most SEF neurons showed differential go/nogo activity during the delay period, before the target intersected the go zone (delay period), whereas most FEF neurons did so after target intersection, during the period in which the movement was executed (movement period). Choice probability (CP) for SEF neurons was high in the delay period but decreased in the movement period, whereas for FEF neurons it was low in the delay period and increased in the movement period. Directional selectivity of SEF neurons was low throughout the trial, whereas that of FEF neurons was highest in the delay period, decreasing later in the trial. Increasing task difficulty led to later discrimination between go and nogo in both structures and lower CP in the SEF, but it did not affect CP in the FEF. The results suggest that the SEF interprets the task rule early but is less involved in executing the motor decision than is the FEF and that these two areas collaborate dynamically to execute ocular decisions.

scholarly journals Frontal eye field and caudate neurons make different contributions to reward-biased perceptual decisions

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunshu Fan ◽  
Joshua I Gold ◽  
Long Ding
Keyword(s):  
Single Neuron ◽  
Neural Substrates ◽  
Neuron Activity ◽  
Frontal Eye Field ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Baseline Activity ◽  
Model Predictions ◽  
Eye Field ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Single Neuron Activity

Many decisions require trade-offs between sensory evidence and internal preferences. Potential neural substrates include the frontal eye field (FEF) and caudate nucleus, but their distinct roles are not understood. Previously we showed that monkeys’ decisions on a direction-discrimination task with asymmetric rewards reflected a biased accumulate-to-bound decision process (Fan et al., 2018) that was affected by caudate microstimulation (Doi et al., 2020). Here we compared single-neuron activity in FEF and caudate to each other and to accumulate-to-bound model predictions derived from behavior. Task-dependent neural modulations were similar in both regions. However, choice-selective neurons in FEF, but not caudate, encoded behaviorally derived biases in the accumulation process. Baseline activity in both regions was sensitive to reward context, but this sensitivity was not reliably associated with behavioral biases. These results imply distinct contributions of FEF and caudate neurons to reward-biased decision-making and put experimental constraints on the neural implementation of accumulation-to-bound-like computations.

Evidence for a supplementary eye field

1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Schlag ◽  
M. Schlag-Rey
Keyword(s):  
Unit Activity ◽  
Cortical Neurons ◽  
Cortical Area ◽  
Head Movements ◽  
Frontal Eye Field ◽  
Unit Recording ◽  
Electrical Microstimulation ◽  
Preferred Direction ◽  
Supplementary Eye Field ◽  
Eye Field

Electrical microstimulation and unit recording were performed in dorsomedial frontal cortex of four alert monkeys to identify an oculomotor area whose existence had been postulated rostral to the supplementary motor area. Contraversive saccades were evoked from 129 sites by stimulation. Threshold currents were lower than 20 microA in half the tests. Response latencies were usually longer than 50 ms (minimum: 30 ms). Eye movements were occasionally accompanied by blinks, ear, or neck movements. The cortical area yielding these movements was at the superior edge of the frontal lobe just rostral to the region from which limb movements could be elicited. Depending on the site of stimulation, saccades varied between two extremes: from having rather uniform direction and size, to converging toward a goal defined in space. The transition between these extremes was gradual with no evidence that these two types were fundamentally different. From surface to depth of cortex, direction and amplitude of evoked saccades were similar or changed progressively. No clear systematization was found depending on location along rostrocaudal or mediolateral axes of the cortex. The dorsomedial oculomotor area mapped was approximately 7 mm long and 6 mm wide. Combined eye and head movements were elicited from one of ten sites stimulated when the head was unrestrained. In the other nine cases, saccades were not accompanied by head rotation, even when higher currents or longer stimulus trains were applied. Presaccadic unit activity was recorded from 62 cells. Each of these cells had a preferred direction that corresponded to the direction of the movement evoked by local microstimulation. Presaccadic activity occurred with self-initiated as well as visually triggered saccades. It often led self-initiated saccades by more than 300 ms. Recordings made with the head free showed that the firing could not be interpreted as due to attempted head movements. Many dorsomedial cortical neurons responded to photic stimuli, either phasically or tonically. Sustained responses (activation or inhibition) were observed during target fixation. Twenty-one presaccadic units showed tonic changes of activity with fixation. Justification is given for considering the cortical area studied as a supplementary eye field. It shares many common properties with the arcuate frontal eye field. Differences noted in this study include: longer latency of response to electrical stimulation, possibility to evoke saccades converging apparently toward a goal, and long-lead unit activity with spontaneous saccades.

scholarly journals Representation of actions and outcomes in medial prefrontal cortex during delayed conditional decision-making: Population analyses of single neuron activity

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 239821281877386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda J. Francoeur ◽  
Robert G. Mair
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Single Neuron ◽  
Neuron Activity ◽  
Related Activity ◽  
Response Options ◽  
Single Neuron Activity ◽  
Temporal Organisation ◽  
Matching To Position

Background: To respond adaptively in a dynamic environment, it is important for organisms to utilise information about recent events to decide between response options. Methods: To examine the role of medial prefrontal cortex in adaptive decision-making, we recorded single neuron activity in rats performing a dynamic delayed non-matching to position task. Results: We recorded activity from 1335 isolated neurons, 458 (34%) with criterion event-related activity, of which 431 (94%) exhibited 1 of 10 distinct excitatory response types: five at different times relative to delivery (or lack) of reinforcement following sample and choice responses and five correlated with movements or lever press actions that occurred multiple times in each trial. Normalised population averages revealed a precisely timed cascade of population responses representing the temporal organisation behavioural events that constitute delayed non-matching to position trials. Firing field analyses identified a subset of neurons with restricted spatial fields: responding to the conjunction of a behavioural event with a specific location. Anatomical analyses showed considerable overlap in the distribution of different response types in medial prefrontal cortex with a significant trend for dorsal areas to contain more neurons with action-related activity and ventral areas more responses related to action outcomes. Conclusion: These results indicate that medial prefrontal cortex contains discrete populations of neurons that represent the temporal organisation of actions and outcomes during delayed non-matching to position trials. They support the hypothesis that medial prefrontal cortex promotes flexible control of complex behaviours by action–outcome contingencies.

scholarly journals Supplementary Eye Field Activity Reflects a Decision Rule Governing Smooth Pursuit but not the Decision

2010 ◽  
Vol 103 (5) ◽  
pp. 2458-2469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun-nan Yang ◽  
Helen Hwang ◽  
Joel Ford ◽  
Stephen Heinen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Rule ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Delay Period ◽  
Moving Target ◽  
Supplementary Eye Field ◽  
Field Activity ◽  
Eye Field ◽  
Display Rule

Animals depend on learned rules to guide their actions. Prefrontal (PFC) and premotor (PMC) cortex of primates have been reported to display rule-related neural activity, but it is unclear how signals encoded here are utilized to enforce the decision to act. The supplementary eye field (SEF) is a candidate for enforcing rule-guided ocular decisions because the activity of neurons here is correlated with the rule in an ocular decision-making task and because this area is anatomically more proximal to movement structures than PFC and PMC and receives inputs from them. However, in the previous work, the rule encoding and ocular outcome were confounded, leaving open the question of whether SEF activity is related to the rule or the behavior. In the present study, we attempted to discriminate between these alternatives by increasing task difficulty and forcing errors, thereby putting the stimulus and the behavior at odds. Single SEF neurons were recorded while monkeys performed the task in which the rule is to pursue a moving target if it intersects a visible square and maintain fixation if it does not. A delay period was imposed to monitor neural activity while the target approached the square. Two complementary populations of go and nogo neurons were found. When task difficultly was increased, the monkeys made more errors, and the neurons took longer to encode the rule. However, in error trials, most neurons continued to reflect the rule rather the monkey's ocular decision in both the delay period and after square intersection (movement period). This was the case for both directionally tuned and nondirectional SEF neurons. The results suggest that SEF neurons encode the ocular decision rule but that the decision itself likely occurs in a different structure that sums rule information from the SEF with information from other areas.

Visually guided saccade versus eye-hand reach: contrasting neuronal activity in the cortical supplementary and frontal eye fields

1996 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 2187-2191 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Mushiake ◽  
N. Fujii ◽  
J. Tanji
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Neuronal Activity ◽  
Motor Task ◽  
Oculomotor Control ◽  
Frontal Eye Field ◽  
Frontal Eye Fields ◽  
Saccadic Eye Movement ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Supplementary Eye Field ◽  
Eye Field

1. We studied neuronal activity in the supplementary eye field (SEF) and frontal eye field (FEF) of a monkey during performance of a conditional motor task that required capturing of a target either with a saccadic eye movement (the saccade-only condition) or with an eye-hand reach (the saccade-and-reach condition), according to visual instructions. 2. Among 106 SEF neurons that showed presaccadic activity, more than one-half of them (54%) were active preferentially under the saccade-only condition (n = 12) or under the saccade-and-reach condition (n = 45), while the remaining 49 neurons were equally active in both conditions. 3. By contrast, most (97%) of the 109 neurons in the FEF exhibited approximately equal activity in relation to saccades under the two conditions. 4. The present results suggest the possibility that SEF neurons, at least in part, are involved in signaling whether the motor task is oculomotor or combined eye-arm movements, whereas FEF neurons are mostly related to oculomotor control.

scholarly journals Salience by Competitive and Recurrent Interactions: Bridging Neural Spiking and Computation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Edward Cox ◽  
Thomas Palmeri ◽  
Gordon D. Logan ◽  
Philip L. Smith ◽  
Jeffrey Schall
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Target Selection ◽  
Interaction Model ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Frontal Eye Field ◽  
Visual Neurons ◽  
Discharge Rates ◽  
Neural Spiking ◽  
Eye Field

Decisions about where to move the eyes depend on neurons in Frontal Eye Field (FEF). Movement neurons in FEF accumulate salience evidence derived from FEF visual neurons to select the location of a saccade target among distractors. How visual neurons achieve this salience representation is unknown. We present a neuro-computational model of target selection called Salience by Competitive and Recurrent Interactions (SCRI), based on the Competitive Interaction model of attentional selection and decision making (Smith & Sewell, 2013). SCRI selects targets by synthesizing localization and identification information to yield a dynamically evolving representation of salience across the visual field. SCRI accounts for neural spiking of individual FEF visual neurons, explaining idiosyncratic differences in neural dynamics with specific parameters. Many visual neurons resolve the competition between search items through feedforward inhibition between signals representing different search items, some also require lateral inhibition, and many act as recurrent gates to modulate the incoming flow of information about stimulus identity. SCRI was tested further by using simulated spiking representations of visual salience as input to the Gated Accumulator Model of FEF movement neurons (Purcell et al., 2010; Purcell, Schall, Logan, & Palmeri, 2012). Predicted saccade response times fit those observed for search arrays of different set size and different target-distractor similarity, and accumulator trajectories replicated movement neuron discharge rates. These findings offer new insights into visual decision making through converging neuro-computational constraints and provide a novel computational account of the diversity of FEF visual neurons.

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