Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on August 18, 2006
Cerebral Cortex 2007 17(6):1468-1475; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl058
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Strength of Figure-Ground Activity in Monkey Primary Visual Cortex Predicts Saccadic Reaction Time in a Delayed Detection Task
1 ICREA & Dep. Psicología Básica, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Barcelona, 08035 Barcelona, Spain, 2 The Netherlands Institute for Neurosciences, 1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 3 Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Address correspondence to email: hans.super{at}icrea.es.
When and where are decisions made? In the visual system a saccade, which is a fast shift of gaze toward a target in the visual scene, is the behavioral outcome of a decision. Current neurophysiological data and reaction time models show that saccadic reaction times are determined by a build-up of activity in motor-related structures, such as the frontal eye fields. These structures depend on the sensory evidence of the stimulus. Here we use a delayed figure-ground detection task to show that late modulated activity in the visual cortex (V1) predicts saccadic reaction time. This predictive activity is part of the process of figure-ground segregation and is specific for the saccade target location. These observations indicate that sensory signals are directly involved in the decision of when and where to look.
Key Words: contextual modulation • decision making • eye movement • monkey • neurophysiology • saccade • sensorimotor integration • V1